Pensions, civil servants, VAT... The Court of Auditors' shock measures to reduce the deficit

The Court of Auditors is a bit tired of simply “reiterating (its) alerts”. The first president, Amélie de Montchalin, gets irritated: “Alert, yes, but also be useful. » Precisely, to “be useful” to the budgetary debate which is currently bogged down in Parliament, the former Minister of Public Accounts presented this Monday a report listing around twenty concrete measures capable of releasing “a total amount of between 32 and 38 billion euros” for the public accounts in the short term. These immediate savings offer the possibility of “preventing the risk of a further deterioration of the public deficit in 2027”, he says.

In these proposals to reduce spending, some already appear in the 2027 budget. In the quantum of around thirty billion euros put forward by the institution, 11 to 14 billion are already included in the government's budget copy. This is the case, for example, of the freezing of social benefits (excluding…