The 2027 finance bill imposes budgetary rigor on almost all ministries, with the notable exception of the Armed Forces, in order to reduce the public deficit and prepare for the next presidency.
The government wants to present a “republican safeguard” budget, which reduces the means of almost all ministries to reduce the public deficit and give the next president “room for maneuver”. This orientation, announced a few months before the presidential election, aims to place the last budget of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency in a logic of rigor, while the situation of public finances remains tense.
The objective now stated is to tighten the belt of all ministries next year, with the notable exception of the Armed Forces and, to a lesser extent, the Ecological Transition. This decision follows a letter sent in June by the Prime Minister to his ministers, in which he castigated their “clearly not prioritized” and “unrealistic” budgetary requests.
A strictly controlled increase in spending
Excluding Defense and the debt burden, the document plans to limit the increase in ministerial spending to 0.4% in 2027, “i.e. four times less than the inflation expected in 2027”. The envelope for the Ministry of the Armed Forces will increase by 6.4 billion euros. For all other ministries combined, appropriations will only increase by 1.5 billion euros in total. In total, expenditure by the State and its operators (France Travail, Météo-France, etc.) “should reach 708.4 billion euros in 2027”.
The budget of the Armed Forces will have almost doubled since 2017. The sums allocated to the Armed Forces have increased significantly (43.9 billion euros in 2023, then 47.2 billion in 2024, 50.5 billion in 2025 and 57 billion in 2026), reaching 63.4 billion in 2027.
The “sustainable ecology, development and mobility” mission will be credited with an additional 1.5 billion euros. The major “France 2030” investment plan will once again be cut, this time by 400 million euros, going from 4.4 billion in 2026 to 4 billion euros in 2027. Within the “work, employment and administration of social ministries” mission, the cut is even more brutal, with 2.8 billion euros less in credits in 2027.
Public development assistance will also see its credits cut by 300 million euros next year, as will relations with local authorities (200 million less) and agriculture and health missions (100 million euros less each).
Expenditure linked to pensions and health will also increase “dynamically” in 2027 and “without financing other new measures than those already taken”. “Social security spending will grow faster than inflation and would increase by 17 billion euros in 2027 to reach 838.3 billion euros,” figures the government.
Faced with this dynamic, four experts commissioned by Bercy concluded this week that a “white year” (a freeze in the amount of social benefits and therefore retirement pensions) “should not a priori be excluded in 2027”.
Next steps and room for maneuver
These spending ceilings will now have to translate into concrete savings avenues, on which parliamentarians will have to agree. The next head of state, if he has a parliamentary majority, could adopt an amending budget from 2027 to leave his own mark.
“We must have a Republican safeguard budget”, defended David Amiel, the Minister of Public Accounts, before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly this Thursday, to avoid “in 2027, under the pretext of elections and electoral campaign, a stall which would send our country permanently into the wall”.
