On Sunday 27 October, the government unveiled measures that should lead the civil service to make five billion euros in additional savings. These include cutting development aid, culture, support mechanisms for greening vehicles and changing the rules governing sick leave.
These measures, detailed by the offices of the Budget and Civil Service Ministers, will be taken by way of amendments to the 2025 Finance Bill and are part of the €60 billion effort decided as part of the budget to redress the accounts and bring the deficit back to 5% of GDP.
Of these 60 billion euros, 20 billion come from tax increases and 40 billion from spending cuts, including 20 billion for the State.
Of these 20 billion euros, 15 billion were already earmarked in the 2025 State and social security budget projects, but 5 billion euros remained to be detailed.
Sick leave in the public sector
Of this total, the civil service is being called upon to contribute 1.2 billion euros in savings expected through the increase in waiting days, which would increase to three days, compared to one day currently, and by capping remuneration at 90% for the first three months of ordinary sick leave, compared to 100% currently.
“This is an alignment with private sector practices,” stressed the office of the Minister of Civil Service Guillaume Kasbarian during an exchange with the press.
It is based on a report published in September estimating the savings on capping remuneration at 90% during ordinary sick leave at 900 million euros, and the move to three waiting days at 289 million euros, while recalling that the exceptions provided for by law will be respected (pregnancy, long-term illness, work accidents, disability, serious illnesses, etc.)
“We are basing ourselves on an observation which is the sharp increase in absenteeism in the civil service over the last ten years. In ten years, the number of days of absence has increased from 43 million days in 2014 to 77 million days in 2022, which represents an increase of almost 80%,” the ministerial services argued.
“We will begin [to discuss] today with the trade union organisations and we hope that this dialogue can continue, however the parliamentary debate is fully legitimate in addressing these issues,” they stressed.
“Reduction of sail area”
More than half of these five billion additional savings, or 2.6 billion, come from the cancellation of a “significant” part of the precautionary reserve of almost all ministries and their operators.
The Ministries of Defense, Interior, Justice, Higher Education and Overseas Territories will not be affected.
The details of how the ministries will distribute these savings will be known in the coming days, as the government tables the amendments.
Added to this is a block of one billion euros of “targeted savings” on public policies, including a reduction of 640 million euros for development aid, a reduction of 55 million euros for culture – notably public audiovisual and the refocusing of the Culture Pass – and a reduction of 300 million euros on support mechanisms for greening vehicles.
On this last point, the envelope increases to 700 million euros instead of the one billion euros announced, “it being specified that these 700 million euros will be supplemented by aid via energy saving certificates”, the offices specified.
As regards development aid, this new cut is in addition to the reduction already planned in the 2025 budget project, of 21% compared to the amount voted the previous year, i.e. 1.3 billion euros less.
“The 2025 credits remain up by 1.2 billion euros compared to 2017, so this is not the abandonment of an ambition but a reduction in scope,” assures the ministerial office.
Finally, a final amount of approximately 300 million in additional savings will be taken from the treasury of certain surplus operators, namely the water agencies, the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) and the Transport Infrastructure Financing Agency (Afit).
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