What are the ceiling letters that Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson are demanding from the government?

These documents, drawn up at the end of August, set out the credits allocated to each ministry for the following year and serve as a working basis for constructing the future draft finance bill.

The preparation of the 2025 budget is already turning into a political battle. While the draft finance bill is to be presented by the government in early October and examined by Parliament in the process, the chairman of the Assembly’s finance committee, Eric Coquerel (LFI), and the budget rapporteur, Charles de Courson (Liot), went to Matignon on Tuesday, September 17, to try – in vain – to obtain key documents to prepare for the budget discussions: the “ceiling letters”.

These letters set the credits allocated to each ministry for the following year and are a working basis for building the draft finance bill for the coming year. They are written after budget conferences, which are generally held between April and May, between the Budget Directorate and the various ministries, as the Ministry of the Economy points out. Following political arbitration, the head of government usually sends them to the ministries at the beginning of the summer. However, due to the early legislative elections and the absence of a fully-fledged government, they were only sent on 20 August by Gabriel Attal. In these documents, the former Prime Minister, who had then resigned, limited himself to proposing a renewal of the resources granted to the ministries, leaving it to his successor to revise the copy.

Although the ceiling letters were received by the ministries, they were not communicated to the heads of the Assembly’s finance committee. who have been asking for them ever since. “To our knowledge, these ‘ceiling letters’ have not been cancelled or replaced by new letters that would be different from them. We therefore take the liberty of reiterating this request for communication to you.”write Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson in a letter addressed to Michel Barnier and published on September 11 on X.

The two parliamentarians underline the“importance” of these documents to construct the 2025 budget. “This allows us to go into detail on the reductions in public spending for each ministry”explained Eric Coquerel on Tuesday on franceinfo. “We are shocked, we were refused these documents”continued the LFI representative as he left Matignon. “They are outside the law, they are putting themselves in danger”he further denounced. Criticizing a “denial of democracy”the latter went to the Ministry of Economy on Wednesday at midday, with Charles de Courson, to “require” these letters. But the two deputies once again left their expedition empty-handed.

There is no obligation on the government to forward these ceiling letters to the heads of the Finance Committee. “We are well aware that it is not customary to communicate these documents,” Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson also acknowledge in their letter. On the other hand, the executive is required to provide another document: the “offprint”. This report, drawn up from the ceiling letters, summarises the envisaged amount of credits by mission and summarises the general orientations of the budget for the following year. The organic law relating to finance laws provides that it be presented “before July 15th” by the government. However, due to the political context, this deadline was not met.

“The delay in transmitting the separate print (…) does not allow the Finance Committee to prepare the examination of the draft finance bill for 2025 within a reasonable time frame”write the two elected officials, who are therefore asking, failing that, to have access to the ceiling letters. In a letter addressed Monday to Eric Coquerel and Charles de Courson, and consulted by franceinfo, the Prime Minister has committed to sending them “at the end of the week” a “provisional version” from the offprint. A timetable that does not satisfy parliamentarians. “My duty is not to wait another week to obtain a document on the working basis of the budget sent to the ministries for almost a month”Eric Coquerel grew impatient on Tuesday.