The public deficit objective of 5% "remains intangible": David Amiel warns that the 5 billion euros to respond to high school anger will have to "be financed by additional efforts"

How to finance government announcements to respond to high school anger while maintaining the deficit objective at 5% of GDP? This is the equation to which David Amiel, Minister of Action and Public Accounts, must find the solution in a Parliament without an absolute majority. This Monday, the government presented several measures, including a plan to renovate school and university buildings, with the first projects starting in 2027 on more than 50 sites.

"The bulk of the amount of announcements is investments in school buildings to be able to renovate and modernize them. And that costs 5 billion euros: four billion euros of loans which will be made by the Banque des Territoires and a billion euros for university buildings", details this Tuesday, October 27 David Amiel on TF1. “It will take efforts” But to finance these announcements, there is no question for the executive to question its public deficit objective of 5% which “obviously remains intangible” according to David Amiel.

To achieve this, the Minister of Public Accounts recognizes that "it will take efforts", because this hand extended to high school anger "will have to be financed by additional efforts". “We cannot promise young people with one hand and strangle them with additional debt with the other,” he explains to our colleagues at TF1. This additional effort will be detailed by announcements during parliamentary debates around the 2027 budget in the coming weeks.

“The first thing is to defend the savings proposed in the budget, because what we have seen in recent weeks is a lot of political groups saying 'no' to all savings whatever they may be,” laments David Amiel. In addition to the five billion euros devoted to school buildings, the government also announced this Monday that student grants will now be indexed to inflation. This revaluation will be accompanied by an overhaul of the scale in order to reintegrate into the system students who have gradually lost their eligibility.

The measure represents an additional cost of more than 100 million euros for the State.

Machine-translated from French