Eric Ciotti believes that France is taking “the same path as Greece”.
The LR president, who has made the recovery of public finances one of his party’s mainstays for June’s European elections, blamed both the head of state and his finance minister for the “disastrous record”. Bruno Le Mere.
Republican boss Eric Ciotti condemned the “dramatic situation” of French public finances in an interview with newspaper Les Ecotes posted online on Tuesday evening and warned that the country was “taking the same path as Greece”.
“The moment of truth has arrived: we are taking the same path as Greece,” assured the Alpes-Maritimes MP, who expects rating agencies to “probably” downgrade the country’s rating in the coming weeks. .
“900 billion euro additional debt” since 2017
“This disastrous management of public money must be censored,” warns Eric Ciotti, who accused Emmanuel Macron of adding “900 billion euros of extra debt” since coming to power in 2017, with a debt burden of “57 billion euros.” ” in 2024.
Eric Ciotti regrets that the government did not accept the proposals presented by his party in the counter-budget unveiled in October, which recommended savings of 25 billion euros, especially on unemployment, and tax cuts of more than 10 billion. For homes and businesses. “It is no longer up to the French to pay for the government’s extravagant lifestyle,” he laments.
In early March, Bruno Le Maire warned that the French public deficit would slip “significantly beyond the 4.9%” of GDP initially expected in 2023, due to lower tax revenues.
In February, the minister announced 10 billion euros in savings and a reduction in the growth forecast from 1.4% to 1% of GDP for 2024.