The Initial Finance Law for 2021 acknowledged the extension of the health crisis and postponed the deadline for submitting the Committee’s final report from March 2021 to July 2021). The Committee published a progress report in April highlighting the knowledge accumulated after one year of the pandemic.[1] This final report updates the results by integrating the second wave of the pandemic – from October 2020 until the end of March 2021 – and provides further insight in several areas. In particular, it studies the impact of support measures on the results of companies, describes their trajectories according to the use of measures, and reports on the sentiments of 600 business leaders. Like the progress report, it is technical in nature and mainly confined to monitoring the measures, given that the health crisis is not yet over and public support obscures the long-term consequences. Unlike the progress report, this final report is accompanied by an opinion, which binds the members of the Committee.
The Committee’s scope of expertise has been expanded with the successive finance laws to now cover 17 support measures for businesses. This report focuses mainly on the four main support measures – partial activity (or furlough), the Solidarity Fund, state-guaranteed loans and deferral of social security contributions, which amount to €230 billion at the end of June 2021,[2] i.e. almost 10% of French GDP.
Moreover, the Initial Finance Law for 2021 entrusts the Committee with evaluating France‘s recovery plan, starting in April 2021. The first report in this respect is due in October 2021.
