The French Prime Minister, , presented this Monday in an extraordinary Council of Ministers a special emergency law that will allow this year’s budgets to be temporarily extended, after This solution “is temporary, they are not budgets,” recalled the president, Emmanuel Macron, who chaired the meeting. The Government is already out of time to approve accounts within the deadlines set by the Constitution, so this provisional, minimum law is the last resort. Assembly and Senate will have to validate it this Tuesday.
Before making it official that he is resorting to the emergency solution, Lecornu has held a round of consultations with the parties with a view to resuming negotiations to provide France with a budget in January, after the Christmas break. On Sunday he received the leaders of the groups that support the Government (Renacimiento and Horizons). This Monday he met with the Socialist Party, environmentalists and communists and also with the conservative party of Los Republicanos.
The emergency law was presented at a late council chaired by Macron, who returned this Monday from Abu Dhabi, where he spent two days celebrating Christmas with the French military stationed in the United Arab Emirates. At a press conference after the meeting, the spokesperson for the Executive, Maud Bregeon, recalled that “the President of the Republic insists that this special law is not a budget and in January the country must have a new one.” “The Government’s will, by choosing this option, is to give negotiation an opportunity,” he noted.
On Friday, already in the final stretch of the budget debate and after two months of negotiations, a commission made up of deputies and senators failed in its attempt to agree on the final draft of the financial law. This would have to have been voted on at the latest this Tuesday to be enacted on December 31, according to constitutional deadlines.
After his meeting with Lecornu, the leader of the socialists, Olivier Faure, reproached the conservative right for its lack of will to reach a consensus. “We have had in front of us a right that rejects all types of compromise,” he said, in reference to the position of some Republican senators involved in the negotiation, who refused to include certain demands of the left in the budget text.
This special law is a provisional patch with which the Government buys some time, since the idea is to resume the talks on January 5 and approve the accounts “at the end of January,” the government spokesperson insisted. This minimum services law allows the State to collect taxes and pay officials, but to reduce the country’s debt, as the Minister of Finance, Roland Lescure, recalled after the council. It will also not allow an increase in the military budget for the coming years, one of Emmanuel Macron’s priorities. “The Government will not spend beyond what is authorized in 2025,” the Executive spokesperson warned. He also recalled that there are 1,600 hirings in the Ministry of Justice and as many in the Interior that will be frozen while waiting to have ‘real’ accounts. “We are not in chaos, but this is just a temporary solution, a plaster,” Bregeon said.
Both environmentalists and communists have already advanced, after meeting with Lecornu, that they will vote against the financial law as it is configured, when the debate resumes in January. Yes, they will support the special law this Tuesday, because no one is interested in the economic paralysis that not doing so would entail.
The January slope looks complicated for Sebastién Lecornu, who has another possible alternative. It is the one that looms large for future negotiations: resorting to article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the accounts to be approved by decree, without a vote. When Lecornu was appointed prime minister, he promised the socialists not to use this controversial article, in exchange for not being censored. Several political leaders have asked him in recent days to reverse his decision and, in the absence of consensus, approve adapted budgets once and for all. It is Macron’s option.
In this case, Lecornu is exposed to the left presenting a motion of censure against his Government, although he cannot be blamed for not having tried. and his main challenge was to try to carry out budgets without being quickly censured. Not an easy mission, in a very fragmented Assembly with very divergent economic positions. His predecessors Michel Barnier and , after presenting packages with historic cuts.
Lecornu has managed to survive two months, he has tried to find consensus and get out of the political blockade. difficult, such as the or his commitment to renounce 49.3. Everything indicates that he will have to back down if he wants to provide France with a budget. The Government returns to the starting point in January, with budget negotiations that will be carried out on the basis of the document already discussed, although in an even more complicated political context: just three months before the municipal elections.
