The armies just have to behave themselves. The worst is yet to come… It will purge

(BRUSSELS2) If most of the armed forces are reluctant when they receive the figures for the 2013 budget forecasts, in France today, in Belgium tomorrow and in the United Kingdom they better watch out. They are not at the end of their troubles. According to the public debt consolidation plan implemented at European level, countries with a debt above the 60% standard must in fact reduce the difference by one-twentieth per year. About fifteen States are concerned: all the Mediterranean countries, France, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. The norm is relentless. But its effects are still poorly understood....

The Commission refuses to communicate

I tried to get figures from the European Commission. The latter, usually prolific, is silent. I have done this several times: in person and by email. At the last attempt, with Olli Rehn's spokesman, the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Simon O'Connor, who is usually affable, he used all possible bad faith not to answer. The first excuse was a vague "I do not know", then"we don't have that kind of statistics"...before recognizing that"there were no public impact studies", all the subtlety of the answer being in the term "public". In fact, the Commission does not do not want communicate on this type of information, especially since the Budget Treaty has not yet been fully approved. We understand his caution...

The States will purge: 30 billion euros to be saved for France (per year), 50 billion for Italy

I tried to translate this into a few numbers to get a more concrete idea. If we take the last known figures for the 1st quarter of 2012, the first year of application of the system would force France to save nearly 30 billion euros on its budget to devote to debt reduction. Same for the following years. Knowing that this debt is currently increasing mechanically, in particular due to commitments for the euro zone, we have an idea of ​​the effort to be made. The cut will need to be drastic as this figure is minimal; it does not take into account the increase in debt in recent months, nor the possible increase in debt in 2013! If we project this figure on the budget of the Ministry of Defence, this supposes, on a pro rata basis, an additional effort, at the very least, of between 1 and 2 billion euros each year (*).

France is not the only one in this case nor the worst off. Germany will thus have to devote 28 billion euros, the United Kingdom about 23 billion euros, Belgium nearly 8 billion. For Greece, the "painful" would amount to 7,5 billion euros; as for Italy, we have reached the sum of 50 billion euros! In other words, totally impossible. Jacques Delors was therefore not wrong in speaking of a "con trap"!

(*) This plan finds its place both in the package on budgetary surveillance (known as the Six Pack) and in the budgetary treaty in the process of being ratified in several countries. The fact that the United Kingdom has not signed the budgetary treaty and that it does not join the Euro zone does not normally change its subjection to this rule which appears in a European regulation. Simply its legal force is slightly lower (unconstitutional).

(**) Everything depends on the distribution of responsibility for debt reduction between the State, local authorities and Social Security; and then the distribution between the different sectors of the State. I made an equal distribution half between the State and the two others, then proportional to the budget of the Defense mission in the State budget.