A “update” envisaged by the Prime Minister. This Tuesday, May 19, during a session at the National Assembly, Sébastien Lecornu indicated that he was considering reviewing the six billion euros of freezes and cancellations of credits planned to compensate for the “impact” of the war in the Middle East on public finances.
“It’s a war and I think the 6 billion euros that we have documented will need to be reviewed, obviously, in the coming times,” he declared in the hemicycle after a question from the leader of the Horizons MPs, Laurent Marcangeli.
Matignon explains that this “update” does not necessarily mean an increase in the amount of these freezes but a different distribution. Sébastien Lecornu will hold a press conference on Thursday, May 21, on the economic consequences of this conflict, which is pushing fuel prices at the pump and driving up costs in several sectors. He will present on this occasion a “new package” of assistance for the month of June intended for the most affected sectors, such as agriculture, fishing, or construction.
The need to “change scale”
To offset the cost of this war, the government announced in mid-April that six billion euros in savings on expenses could be made in 2026, in the form of credit freezes or “targeted cancellations”. The effort would be for four billion euros on the state and two billion euros in “the social sphere”.
The Prime Minister estimated that “unfortunately, this geopolitics has taken hold of the French population and, as we see, in one form or another, this will last,” referring to the “crisis of imported inflation on energy”. Constrained by budget discipline and threatened by a recession, the government has been delaying since the start of the war at the end of February on the aid it still wants to be “targeted” and not general, ruling out any tax cuts.
Sébastien Lecornu acknowledged, however, that the crisis was lingering and that in this context, it was necessary to “change scale”, promising not to abandon “anyone”. “Since the beginning, my obsession, that of the government, is to ensure that entire sectors of the country’s economic activity do not come to a halt,” he insisted on Tuesday.
He also wanted to avoid windfall effects. “We must not let certain sectors take advantage, precisely, to play off this inflation. Today, we must only observe inflation on these costs derived from petroleum products and nothing else,” he elaborated. In this regard, he entrusted the Minister of SMEs Serge Papin to “clarify all price impacts on sectors and construction.” He also asked Roland Lescure, Minister of Economy, and Sébastien Martin, Minister of Industry, to make “proposals” for the chemical sector, “very exposed” to this crisis.
