PARIS (Reuters) – France wants to cut government spending on office space and may consider selling real estate to reduce the national deficit, the budget and finance minister said in a media interview on Sunday. Ta.
The government also plans to review unemployment benefits for the elderly.
Budget Minister Thomas Cazenave told La Tribune that the government wants to reduce the amount of office space occupied by the regime by 25%.
“There’s real leverage for savings there, especially given the new ways of working,” he said, referring to the rise in working from home following the coronavirus pandemic.
He said the ratio of office space per civil servant was 24 square meters (258 square feet), far above the private industry standard, and that the government wanted to reduce this to 16 square meters.
“We may also consider selling real estate,” he said.
Asked whether the government could achieve its goal of reducing unemployment from 7% to 5% by 2027, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that this would require a review of social policies, particularly unemployment benefits. He said it would be.
“We have worked hard to move from 9% to 7%, but moving to 5% requires courageous choices…We need to review all systems to compensate for unemployment among the elderly,” Le Maire said. There is,” he said.
Kaznabe also confirmed that the government will seek an additional €12 billion in spending cuts for the 2025 budget, as discussed with Prime Minister Elisabeth Born on Thursday.
“We have confirmed a spending cut target of 16 billion euros ($17.5 billion) in the 2024 budget and have already set aside 12 billion euros in savings for the 2025 budget,” he said. It added that it still aims to reduce the fiscal deficit by 4.4 times. In 2024 he will be % of GDP, in 2025 he will be 3.7%.
(1 dollar = 0.9168 euro)
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Hugh Lawson)