Between blindly distributed subsidies, companies on life-support and public spending dubbed "aid", France is discovering the extent of a system where taxpayer money sometimes seems to matter less than political interests. Behind the battle of billions, one question remains: who controls the use of this money?
It took years for Bercy to finally put a figure on public aid to business: €166 billion in 2024. A dizzying amount, behind which lies the reality of a State that distributes and subsidizes schemes whose effectiveness too often remains difficult to demonstrate.
The Battle of the Billions
The Senate commission of inquiry, whose rapporteur is the communist Fabien Gay, had advanced €211 billion for 2023. This gap of 45 billion with Bercy's figure is due to the calculation method.
The senatorial report included loans, guarantees and equity stakes from Bpifrance, as well as tax mechanisms that do not constitute aid in the economic sense of the term. Subsidies must be distinguished from repayable financial instruments, otherwise figures become political weapons rather than control instruments.
What are these 166 billion used for?
These 166 billion are not gifts to private companies. Budgetary expenditure includes funding pensions for La Poste and France Télécom civil servants, maintenance and development of the railway network, as well as public energy service charges.
As for reduced VAT rates, they benefit consumers.
A Necessary National Debate
There remains an estimated amount of €88.58 billion in measures that could be abolished or reformed, depending on the scope chosen (State aid, tax expenditures and exemptions from social contributions). This is a subject for national debate.
For, in a country that accumulates deficits and sees its debt swell, every euro collected must be able to justify its usefulness.
Entrepreneur Éric Larchevêque asks the disturbing question: why should the State decide, through Bpifrance, which companies deserve to be funded? His criticism targets a mechanism where public money comes to support projects that private investors have not always wished to fund, in the name of innovation or sovereignty.
The example of the start-up Ÿnsect is embarrassing. This company specializing in the production of insects for animal feed benefited from considerable public funding, estimated at least €300 million, before its judicial liquidation.
Of course, not every entrepreneurial failure is proof of bad public management. Innovation involves risks. But when a project swallows hundreds of millions of public money without managing to sustain its activity, taxpayers have the right to demand explanations.
Bernard BERTUCCO VAN DAMME