Finance Bill: By imposing up to 10 billion euros in savings, Macron's government is bleeding local authorities dry

To strangle. To squeeze by the throat so as to make one lose breath, one's life. To make narrow, to compress. To prevent free functioning, to ruin. First, second or third definitions of this verb... All correspond to the treatment inflicted on local authorities (municipalities, departments and regions) under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron: the austerity purge.

With its 2026 Finance Bill (PLF), the government does not intend to stop the costs, quite the contrary. The draft submitted by Sébastien Lecornu plans to ask the various local levels for a minimum effort of 4.7 billion euros , twice as much as last year.

That's on paper. Because according to the figures from André Laignel , president of the Local Finance Committee (CFL), the bill would be much higher. Refusing the executive's figures, he denounces a savings plan of "between 8 and 10 billion euros ."

Indeed, according to the Socialist mayor of Issoudun (Indre), who is also deputy vice-president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), the Prime Minister's accounts do not include certain cuts requested from local authorities, which would nevertheless seriously hamper their operations. "This is the worst budget ever presented to...