As for the net tax revenue of the central government, it remained in 2007 at the same level as in 2004, whereas the total revenues rose by 51 billion € since 2004, because of increasing transfers of revenues to social security and local authorities to reduce their deficit (€70 bn in 2007). In 2007 France's central government took in revenues of approximately €272 billion and had expenditures of €354 billion. Overall, the government registered a deficit of approximately €42 billion. Although deficits have been commonplace, efforts have been made in recent years to cut back the growth of taxes and government spending. Deficit reduction became a top priority of the government when France committed to the European Monetary Union. The Maastricht Treaty targets for the EMU required the members countries to reduce the government's budget deficit to 3% of GDP and the public debt to 60% of GDP. Recent evolution The evolution of the level of the tax burden since the early 1970s can be divided into three distinct phases. First, during the 70s and in the first half of the 1980s, the tax rate increased from 34% to 42%. Then it stabilized at a rate close to 42% until the early 1990s, when it resumed its growth rate to the historical height of 44.9% in 1999. Since then, the rate of PO government has declined slightly to between 43% and 44% of the GDP. Over the last decades, the distribution of tax burden between the three main administrations has changed significantly. The share allocated to the state has tended to decline, while that allocated to the social security institutions and local governments has grown The higher tax rate of social security is due to the general upward trend of social spending, particularly the higher spending on pension and health insurance systems. The pension expenditure grew from 11% of the GDP in 1981 to 13% in 2007, and health spending increased from 6% of the GDP to 10% in 2006 over the same period. In this context, the structure of the funding of the social security administrations has been more and more assured by taxes rather than social contributions. In particular, new taxes were levied to help fund the social security administrations, such as the general social contribution (CSG) and the contribution for the repayment of the social debt (CRDS). More recently, the central government has helped to fund the