With the health crisis, the French debt has widened further. And this debt now, it must be reduced, believes the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton. In addition, according to him, it is not necessarily so complicated: “We managed to do it, you know when I was finance minister, sorry to say it, but I lowered the debt. We can do it. It wasn’t super painful and we didn’t have any problems. ‘austerity”he said on franceinfo Monday, June 27.
Is France too indebted? ➡️ “Of course, almost all Member States are too indebted”, according to Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market. “When I was Minister of Finance, I lowered the debt.” pic.twitter.com/osT4f97gYp
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) June 27, 2022
Is the former minister telling the truth? Yes, the debt did come down without austerity in 2006 and 2007. But if Thierry Breton is right, he does not say everything.
First, we will go back in time, to the time when he was Minister of the Economy. While he is in office, the debt of France is actually experiencing a significant decline. The debt, which represented 66% of GDP, fell to 64% that year, ie two points less. It may not seem like much, but it is the largest drop recorded in the last thirty years, according to what the France Trésor agency, responsible for managing the debt of the State, said at the time.
Except that it lacks a bit of context. Because what Thierry Breton does not say is that if the debt decreased that year, it was partly thanks to the privatization of the motorways. Their sales brought in just over 16 billion euros and a large part of this money, around 11 billion, was used to pay off part of France’s debt. This privatization, which therefore filled the coffers of the State, is now controversial because the highways could have been sold even more expensively, up to 6 billion more according to a report by the National Assembly published this year. Not to mention the money that they would have brought in every year to the State if it had remained the owner since the dividends bring in around 3 billion per year, according to the Transport Regulatory Authority.
To put it plainly: Thierry Breton is right to say that France’s debt fell significantly when he was minister, except that it was not only thanks to structural reform but also to the sale of part of France’s heritage. ‘State.
How can everyone be better informed?
Participate in the consultation initiated as part of the European project De facto on the Make.org platform. Franceinfo is the partner