Ile-de-France "forced" to make 760 million euros in savings

The draft finance law (PLF) for 2025 provides for an effort of 5 billion euros for local authorities in order to reduce the public deficit to 5% of GDP, with a levy of 3 billion euros on the revenues of the 450 largest local authorities.

"The State is brutally and arbitrarily depriving us of 100 million euros in VAT revenue in 2024 and 220 million in confiscations of revenue in 2025", representing an "unprecedented 5% drop in revenue" for the region, declared its LR president Valérie Pécresse during the presentation of the budgetary orientation document.

A "blind and unfair cut," she denounced, while the region has "controlled its debt" and "reduced its operating expenses."

The country's leading economic region is the one "which has the highest poverty rate in metropolitan France after Hauts-de-France", and which receives "the lowest revenues per inhabitant in France", underlined Valérie Pécresse.

The budget trajectory provides for 760 million euros of savings in 2025 "to anticipate three years of revenue losses".

Refusing any increase in taxes, she decided "under duress" to suspend all projects co-financed by the State and the region, with the exception of transport projects which are co-financed with the departments.

This suspension, worth around 100 million euros, mainly concerns higher education, research and culture.

"Blank year" also for renewable energy projects (around 30 million euros), housing subsidies (74 million euros) and orders for professional training (89 million euros).

"There are no savings to be made on high schools; on the contrary, we are going to open seven new ones," said the regional president.

"Despite all the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the budget, I support Michel Barnier's government because if it were not voted through it would be worse than anything," she commented, hoping that the Senate would bring "a little reason" into the PLF.

"The State has a convenient excuse," Céline Malaisé, president of the Left Communist, Ecological and Citizen group in the Regional Council, told AFP, according to whom this "austerity budget pays for Valérie Pécresse's poor management choices."

The elected official is particularly concerned about the "pausing of State-region plan contracts, the main lever for investment in the region", and fears "a collapse" in the housing sector.