4% of GDP in 2014. This is better than anticipated by Bercy, whose forecast was 3.8%. It is also better than the 4% threshold recommended in February 2015 by the European Commission when it granted France a new two-year period to return below the 3% threshold.
As a result, public debt is only slightly up (+0.4 point) to 95.7% of GDP.
Another positive news for the Ministry of Finance is that mandatory contributions decrease to 44.5% of GDP in 2015, while public spending increases by 0.9% in value.
The state budget deficit stood at 70.5 billion euros in 2015 (compared to 73.3 billion recorded in the Finance Law), and the social security deficit (general regime + FSV) reached 10.6 billion against -12.8 billion recorded in the 2015 budget.
On the side of local authorities, INSEE figures indicate an improvement in their self-financing capacity, with a further decline in investment expenditures and a slowdown in the growth of operating expenses.
Conversely, the revenues of local authorities continue to increase despite the cuts in the global operating grant (DGF) provided by the State.
After peaking at 7.2% of GDP in 2009, the public deficit has been decreasing for the sixth consecutive year. On average, the public deficit should have been around 2.2% in the eurozone (and 2.5% in the European Union).
Every little helps, as they say, so this reduces the gap to achieve the target of reducing the public deficit to 3.3% of GDP this year.
The government will have to offset this by additional savings for the new expenses announced since the beginning of the year, which will cost about 3 billion euros for the State (2 billion for employment and training, 850 million for aid to farmers, and about 300 million for the thawing of the civil servants’ salary index point).
