2 billion included in the Act of programming

The announcement comes at property wrong time for Nicolas Sarkozy. Monday, before the Congress, the head of State laid great stress on the investment for the future, putting forward, in particular, those concerning education: reform of upper secondary schools, boarding schools of excellence, second chance schools, etc. Today, before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, the Minister of the Budget, Eric Woerth, must present the main orientations of the 2010 budget, whereas letters caps fixing the means of the various ministries have sent 10 days ago. It should be the removal of 16,000 positions in national Education in 2010, after 13,500 this year and 11.200 in 2008. Knowing that the departure of some 34,000 officers is anticipated in the Education, the rule of the replacement of a staff member on two starting retirement will therefore nearly reached (the rate of replacement will be 47, 38 in 2009). It remains to know how these deletions will be divided between primary schools, colleges and high schools.

Objective achieved

This will allow the Government to achieve the objective announced last month: suppression of 34,000 positions of public servants in 2010 (for approximately 68,000 departures). More specifically, the number of deleted posts would be 33.500 excluding annexes budgets. The other departments concerned in the first place are the defence (with a little more than 8,000 jobs deleted next year), the Ministry of the Interior, with about 3,500 jobs and less, and the Budget and finance (about 3,000). Single mission with net creation of jobs: Justice will have 400 additional jobs (especially for coaching in the new prisons). And if Education is its decrease significantly, higher education and research benefit as expected from a freeze on the deletions of posts in 2010 and 2011.

On the side of budgetary appropriations, Eric Woerth reached to respect the rule of evolution expenses limited to inflation in 2009 as in 2010, excluding stimulus spending. And this, despite a weaker than expected price increase (0.4 in 2009, 1.2 in 2010). Expenses related to debt, despite an explosion of volumes, are indeed significantly revised downwards: they would be confined between 39 and 40 billion euros this year 43 planned billion. The explanation is twofold: interest rates are very low and Bercy had provisioned titles indexed on the inflation that proved superfluous spending. In 2008, the opposite had occurred since this indexing (15 of the bonds) had increased 2.5 billion debt load. Compliance with the standard "zero volume" will not prevent the budget deficit to be around 127 billion euros in 2009 ("Les Echos" from June 22).

Breath of oxygen

For 2010, the Government also reviews the cost of the debt down to EUR 42.5 billion 45.2 billion included in the Act of programming. This breath of oxygen, which must be added some 400 million euros of expenditure for pensions less for public servants (because of the low inflation), to compensate for slippages on social spending: employment budget is revised upward by 700 million euros, as well as the solidarity mission expenditure, the budget of the city and housing as it identified nearly 500 million euros by report the Act of programming.