The French Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has failed in his attempt to move forward in the Assembly the Budget project for 2026. The mixed commission, made up of seven deputies and seven senators and which was to agree on the final version of the document this Friday, has not reached an agreement. Thus France appears again, from which it has been trying to get out for a year.
The parliamentarians confirmed their differences as soon as the meeting started. This means that the Budget law cannot be approved within the deadlines set by the Constitution. Next Tuesday was the deadline for the Assembly to vote on the final document. The law was to be promulgated on December 31.
After weeks of negotiation, trying to reach agreements with the different political groups, and present this Friday a special law that will ensure the functioning of the State, collect taxes and pay salaries to officials.
“The Government takes note of the failure of the joint joint commission formed by deputies and senators, without the Government. I thank all the deputies of all the groups who have worked to seek, in good faith, a reasonable compromise, as happened with the social security budget. I regret, however, the lack of will on the part of some deputies to reach an agreement,” Lecornu wrote on the social network X.
The prime minister will meet starting Monday with the heads of the political parties to “consult the steps to follow to protect the French and seek a solution.”
Discussions on the budget will resume in January, to try to approve it later. The special law, which must be validated at the beginning of next week by the two chambers, is a temporary patch, since it only allows the functioning of the State to be maintained but not to make the necessary adjustments to redirect the country’s high deficit, 5.4% this year, very far from the 3% limit set by Brussels for 2029.
When he was appointed prime minister, Lecornu promised that he would not resort to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which would have allowed him to approve budgets by decree, without a parliamentary vote. Since the 2022 legislative elections, which left the Assembly fragmented and without majorities, successive governments had resorted to this controversial article to approve the accounts.
deep division
The disagreement of the commission meeting this Friday puts an end to two months of negotiations in which Lecornu had achieved the support of the socialists, necessary to move forward with the law. Yes, it was possible to approve the social security budgets last week, thanks to the fact that the Government accepted, as the Socialist Party demanded, .
Lecornu’s entourage, through the press, already warned on Thursday of the difficulties for the commission to reach an agreement, and criticized the “radical” stance of some senators from the conservative party of the Republicans, who refused to accept some of the proposals of the left.
The inability to reach a consensus on the most important law for the country reveals the deep division that exists in the Assembly. The head of the Socialists, Olivier Faure, has accused The Republicans of “choosing to blockade the country.” Bruno Retailleau, president of the conservative party, has replied that the budget project “would have plunged France into a spiral of debt.”
An extraordinary council of ministers must be held this weekend to examine the special law. In 2024, the previous Government already had to resort to this tool, after the censure of the then Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, precisely when he tried to approve a budget package that contemplated historic cuts. Later, François Bayrou fell for the same reason.
The absence of budgets for next year is the worst scenario. This Friday the statistics institute published that the French debt, one of the highest in the euro zone, now rises to 117% of GDP. And, in an interview with the newspaper Le Figarothe governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau, asked politicians for responsibility to reduce a rampant debt that “puts France in danger.”
