French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is facing the most uncertain start to the year that a government in his country has seen in a long time. Without budgets for 2026 due to lack of parliamentary agreement, those for 2025 had to be urgently extended to avoid the financial collapse of the State. This week, Lecornu plans to resume negotiations with political groups to agree as quickly as possible on a financial law which will make it possible to end the blockade. All this, less than three months before the municipal elections, which will complicate the task of reaching a consensus.
France has no budget, but at least it starts the year with a government. Lecornu has been in power for just over 100 days. Upon his appointment, he announced a “new method of government”, which involved dialogue and trying to reach agreements with the parties within a highly fragmented and majority-less Assembly. For the moment, he managed to overcome the censure of deputies, but he did not approve the financial law, which was his main mission.
The task is complicated, since in the last two months, during the development of the law, the inability of the parties to reach agreements has become evident. The proof is that the accounts were rejected in the final phase of the negotiation. Despite everything, Lecornu believes that it is still possible to achieve them in January “without the intervention of the Government”, that is to say without them being approved by decree.
Parliamentary activity resumes on the 5th, but this week the Government will begin informal contacts with certain parties to move forward before officially resuming negotiations on that date. A videoconference has already been organized with representatives of the Socialist Party, who have agreed not to censor Lecornu in exchange for some concessions, such as the suspension of the 2023 pension reform. Conversations, as until now, will exclude the two poles of the parliamentary arc: the far-right party of Marine Le Pen and La France Insoumise, the left-wing populist formation of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The cost of not having a budget
The government wants the full accounts to be approved by the end of January, as the budget extension is only a temporary measure and extending it would have a high economic cost for the country. The basis for resuming negotiations will be the budgetary text coming from the Senate, dominated by the right and the centrists, on December 15. This project was not validated by the joint commission made up of deputies and senators, already in the final phase, due to disagreements between the socialists and Los Republicanos, the traditional right-wing party.
The landscape has not changed and the March elections will make it difficult to soften the political positions of the parties, as they could contradict their respective electoral platforms. Municipal elections will take place on March 15 and 22. The candidate deputies have been campaigning for some time, as is the case of Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture and conservative candidate for mayor of Paris.
Parties like the Republicans, who had to give in and see pension reform suspended under pressure from the Socialists, will not soften their position during the second round of negotiations in January, just two months before the elections. On the left, environmentalists also warned Lecornu that they were not going to vote in favor of the budget text coming from the Senate.
During the processing in the Upper House, some of the demands of the left were eliminated, such as the increase in taxes on companies and large fortunes, which were included in the text debated in the Assembly, during the previous stage.
Municipal elections also cost the State around 193 million euros. This expenditure is not included in the special budget extension law, even if the idea is that the 2026 accounts will be approved before the date of the elections.
Lecornu promised not to use article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a law to be adopted without a vote. Although pressure is growing on the French center and right to retract and approve the budget by force, he insists he will not do so for now. Failure to keep his promise could cause him to lose support from socialists and risk censorship.
“Sébastien Lecornu, surely with good intentions, tried to do something new, but this is incompatible with the political situation of the moment. Reaching an agreement on the finance law is more than improbable given the differences shown (between the parties)”, illustrated these days the former Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard to the newspaper. The World.
The budget extension law was promulgated this Saturday after being unanimously approved before Christmas in the Assembly. This allows the government to gain a little time, but it is a provisional minimum service measure, which allows the State to pay the pensions and salaries of civil servants, but does not give more margin.
Last year, the previous year’s accounts had to be extended, following the motion of censure against the then Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, when he tried to approve the budgets by decree. Finally, the accounts were closed in February. Lecornu faces a more unfavorable outlook, since the country’s debt then stood at 112% of GDP. Today it reaches 117%.
Barnier stayed in government for three months, as long as Lecornu. His method, which consists of trying to reach a consensus within a polarized Assembly, has not been successful so far, but he has not been penalized by the French. According to a Harris Interactive poll for LCI published this Friday, after the extension of the budget, 34% of respondents trust the Prime Minister, only one point less than in September, when he was appointed.
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