Can an agreement be reached on the 2026 budget, currently debated in the National Assembly? The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, believes in this. On BFMTV, this Monday, November 3, “he thinks there is a narrow path”, specifying that his party “aims to be useful to the French” and “extract an entire part (of the budget, ed.) of what is necessarily unimaginable for us.”
And if he does not achieve his objectives, could Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu be a victim of censorship by PS deputies? The leader of the socialists warns on our antenna that the fall of the Government “will be decided in the months” in which “we will see the complete copy” of the budget.
The left avoids a meeting with the government
This Monday morning, Olivier Faure admitted that the PS is not “looking for a socialist budget.” “It will be a budget that will be neither socialist nor from Sébastien Lecornu. Because we do not have an absolute majority, which implies being in a kind of waiting budget. We will see in 2027 who wins the presidential elections and at that time perhaps a majority will emerge,” he continued on France Inter. Among the demands presented by the socialists to Matignon are the freezing of social benefits and the maximum limit of allowances.
Today, the PS, like the other left-wing parties, announced that it would not attend the budget meeting at the Ministry of Relations with Parliament around the government “in the presence of the National Rally.”
Will the budget be approved on time?
The discussions will be interrupted this Monday afternoon to give way to those related to the Social Security budget. They will resume on November 12, until midnight on November 23 at the latest, with constitutional deadlines requiring the government to transmit the text to the Senate.
On Monday, the government was counting on a vote on November 17 on the “revenue” part of the state budget, but for the president of the Finance Committee, Éric Coquerel, “we are going directly to the fact of not voting.”
If the deadlines are met, the approval of the text would require the abstention of socialists and environmentalists (and the positive vote of the entire government coalition). But nothing is less certain, neither on the left nor on the right. The general rapporteur of the Budget, Philippe Juvin, already anticipated its rejection, indicating “not seeing very well how this part 1 (of the budget, editor’s note) could be voted on, because in fact it is not going to satisfy anyone.”
If this first part is rejected, the budget project would go to the Senate in its initial version and the parliamentary shuttle would continue. If Parliament has not voted by December 23, the government can legislate by ordinance, an unprecedented procedure. Another option, in case of rejection of the budget: voting on a special law.
Source: BFM TV
