211 billion euros in public aid to businesses: a crazy amount of money

What is the state's largest public budget? National education? If only... Defense? Not even close. With 211 billion euros in 2023, public aid to businesses is at the top, and no one knew it. Every single euro of public money, this collective wealth that belongs to all citizens, is sacred. But it took a Senate commission of inquiry to look into the matter for the matter to be brought to light.

No one at the Élysée Palace, the Ministry of Finance, the Court of Auditors, or the High Commission for Planning had thought to do the math. While François Bayrou is seeking €40 billion in savings, while public services are bearing the brunt of austerity, while the French are tightening their belts, what urgency was there, it's true, to look at the reality of the amount paid to companies, including those in the CAC 40?

A straw, no doubt, the financial Mozarts who organized this smokescreen must have been thinking. But the straw is a gigantic beam: ten points of GDP! This is now established, thanks to the work initiated by Communist Senator Fabien Gay, who calls for a shock of transparency, a shock of rationalization, and a shock of accountability so that these aids are finely measured, evaluated, and conditioned each year.

Is it normal for government aid to end up as dividends to shareholders? That companies are supported even though they are making profits on the one hand, and laying off staff and relocating on the other? Is it acceptable for groups that do not pay taxes in France to receive state funding without compensation?

You have to be very servile to Bercy or the Élysée to give in like that. Even the big bosses don't expect that much. The proof is that when Fabien Gay questioned them, Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, replied that "the State should condition this aid. If there is a return to good fortune, it must be returned." And Florent Menegaux, CEO of Michelin, acknowledged that if machines purchased with public aid are not "remaining in France, it would not be abnormal for us to reimburse it ." Noted!