Hallelujah! France finally has a budget for 2025. It took four months to come up with an uneasy compromise, but that's not the whole story. By forcing through the budget bill using Article 49.3 of the Constitution, in a fractured political landscape, Prime Minister François Bayrou succeeded where his predecessor had failed: to give the country a "revenue" column and an "expenditure" column to put an end to the uncertainty that was weighing on the economy. This lowest common denominator was widely condemned, but in the end, responsibility prevailed.
In an op-ed in Le Monde (in French), radical left MP Eric Coquerel explained that there was no problem with France continuing to tinker with whatever means were at hand, in other words, with the recycled 2024 budget. That is not something the president of the Assemblée Nationale's Finance Committee should be saying. A collection of "victories" – in other words, raised taxes and avoided spending cuts – brought the Socialists back into the camp of the governing parties, as they refused to back a no-confidence motion. The far-right Rassemblement National, for its part, did not want to back to the motion either, but more out of a wish to boost its "respectability" credentials than out of conviction.
Political savvy did not prevent the budget proposal from being orphaned, not even defended by the "central bloc." It's hard to blame Bayrou, who, without a majority, had to deal with the 2024 budget going off course, and then with the blunders of his predecessor, Michel Barnier. The latter at least made a useful contribution by demonstrating the deadlock created by no-confidence votes. However, in view of the country's financial situation, this budget lacks direction, courage and a structural remedy. Even so, the deficit has been reduced by 0.6 points of gross domestic product (GDP), the equivalent of €18 billion. But this is an effort that will have to be repeated every year until 2029 if France is to meet its European commitments. The road ahead is long.
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