It's hard to know what to make of the "ceiling letters" sent by Gabriel Attal, France's outgoing prime minister, to all his ministers on Tuesday, August 20. In these documents setting a provisional spending cap for each ministry ahead of the drafting of the following year's budget, Attal announced a blanket freeze of total government spending at €492 billion in 2025. According to his office, the budgets for defense, culture and sports would be relatively prioritized, to the detriment, in particular, of labor and employment. Is this a base to work on for the future government? A necessary technical measure? Political signal? A draft destined for the garbage bin? Maybe all of the above.
This is the first time in the Fifth Republic that an outgoing prime minister has set a budgetary framework for resigning ministers, explicitly stating from the outset that this framework is subject to adjustment, or even questioning, over the coming weeks. It is a "reversible budget," to use the surprising phrase coined by the prime minister's office: "It can be modified by the next government and Parliament." Here is yet another unprecedented situation created by President Emmanuel Macron's decision to dissolve the Assemblée Nationale on June 9 and call early elections, followed by his decision not to appoint a prime minister immediately after the second round of those elections on July 7.
The issuing of the ceiling letters, which have no legal value, traditionally marks a key stage in the preparation of the state budget. They are usually signed by the prime minister between mid-July and early August, following negotiations between the Finance Ministry and the other ministries. This year, the minister for public accounts, Thomas Cazenave, promised to accelerate the timetable and had begun line-by-line discussions with his colleagues in charge of the civil service and sports when the dissolution brought everything to a halt.
Cazenave and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire had imagined they would leave the reins to the future prime minister, especially as a resigning government is supposed to limit itself to managing day-to-day affairs. However, as Macron has been slow to appoint a prime minister, Finance Ministry officials decided it was essential to continue preparing a budget bill, and therefore ceiling letters, so as not to tie up the complicated budgetary machinery. After some hesitation, Attal in turn chose to send out these letters, but not without revising and correcting them, and about a month behind schedule.
You have 58.82% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.