Gabriel Attal’s offensive against Anne Hidalgo foreshadows Battle of Paris from 2026

The Minister of Public Accounts, to whom we intend to aim for the conquest of the capital during the next municipal elections, denounces the “calamitous financial management” of the socialist mayor of Paris.

by Laurent Telo

This is a violent comparison, although quite esoteric at first glance, which should continue Gabriel Attal, Minister Delegate in charge of public accounts, a good time. Wednesday, November 23, on France Inter, he attacked the budget management of the city of Paris by denouncing a “delusional system”, that of “capitalized rents”, which was set up within the municipality ” In 2015 “, when François Hollande was President of the Republic. “The reality is that there are more than a billion euros now in more debt for the city of Paris linked to this system, has been in Mr. Attal. Honestly, that is Ponzi . “

Anne Hidalgo considered the burden serious enough to announce that it would file a defamation complaint against the minister “for the outrageous remarks he has made and which question the probity of the city”. A complaint that cannot be filed, on behalf of the City of Paris, before a deliberation and a vote during the next Paris Council, which will take place from December 13 to 16.

Two definitions are essential to understand the controversy. The abntriation of “capitalized rents” allows the town hall to ask social landlords managing housing that it has pre -empted the payment of all rents, in one go, on leases often of several decades . These funds are supposed to allow the city to invest in the long term. Except that an exceptional exemption has been granted to him so that this windfall, around one billion euros since 2016, allows it to balance its operating budget. As for the principle of the “pyramid of Ponzi”, it is a fraudulent system in which the interests of investors are paid with the capital of new arrivals, without the money being really placed, enriching the author of the scam in passing.

While specifying that he does not compare Anne Hidalgo to Bernard Madoff, arrested in 2008 for a vast scam of this type, Gabriel Attal, as a competent minister, says he put an end to this system “because this n ‘ is not healthy “. He slightly retroped, Sunday, November 27, on BFM-TV: the Ponzi system “is not necessarily a scam”. But he assumes to aim for “a calamitous financial management with practices that [he] continues to denounce”. The court will judge if the metaphor is defamatory.

“it matraque the Parisians”

This verbal acme completes a pass of weapons which is dragged between the minister and the mayor of Paris, since the latter decided, on November 7, to increase the property tax by 52 %, breaking with his Electoral promise, in 2020, not to touch local taxes. To justify such a constrained measure, it overwhelms the government: “taxpayers pay 720 million euros for the state budget”, while the overall operating allocation received in return “amounts to 40,000 euros”. In response, Gabriel Attal reiterated, on BFM-TV, that he was entitled to hear the mayor of Paris: “I am the Minister of the Budget. She bathes the Parisians to balance her budget and she says that it is because of the State … “

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/Media reports cited above.