The High Council of Public Finances (HCFP) judged on Wednesday that the new trajectory for reducing the public deficit lacked "credibility" and "coherence" faced with a "worrying" public finance situation. The new stability program, or "PSTAB", defines for Brussels the way in which France intends to return below 3% of GDP public deficit in 2027, under penalty of financial sanctions.
It forecasts a reduction in the deficit to 5.1% in 2024, 4.1% in 2025, 3.6% in 2026, and finally 2.9% in 2027. The HCFP estimates that this would imply a massive structural adjustment between 2023 and 2027 (2.2 points of GDP over four years) which "would be essentially based on an effort to save on spending." It also warns that the implementation of the planned structural adjustment will necessarily weigh, at least in the short term, on economic activity.