Three short articles, not one more: Few bills are so minimalist. The one that justified an extraordinary French cabinet meeting on Wednesday, December 11, was as exceptional in its brevity as it was in its stated purpose: "to guarantee the continuity of national life." After the no-confidence motion that toppled Prime Minister Michel Barnier's government made it impossible to adopt a budget for 2025, this "special law," which was submitted to the ministers as they met for the first time since their collective resignation, has been designed simply to prevent the French government and social security system from losing the means to act on January 1, 2025. It urgently organizes France's provisional financial operations until a proper budget can be voted through.

"There's no need to panic or to exult prematurely: This bill will give the government the minimum means to avoid an American-style shutdown, and taxpayers will continue to pay taxes," summed up Emmanuelle Mignon, a partner at the law firm August Debouzy who served as a senior aide to former president Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace.

After passing through the Council of Ministers, the bill will be presented, on Wednesday afternoon, before the finance committees of both chambers of Parliament by the caretaker budget and finance ministers, before MPs vote on it on Monday, December 16. The government's objective is to obtain an identical vote from both bodies, without amendment, so that the law can be put into force as quickly as possible, before the end of the year.

The government is in rather unknown territory here: There is no procedure in the Constitution that corresponds exactly to the current case. Under the Fifth Republic established in 1958, France has only passed one special law of this type, in 1979. However, an opinion issued by the Council of State on Monday has laid out some foundations. The Council concluded that a caretaker government is still empowered to put an emergency law, such as the one prepared over the last few days, to a vote – in the name of the necessary continuity of the state. However, the bill must be precisely limited to this sole function. It cannot replace the future budget.

The law will therefore consist of only a handful of sentences. As in 1979, the first sentence authorizes the government "to continue to collect existing taxes" until the budget is passed. This means that money will still flow into the public treasury, but only on the basis of the rules laid down at the end of 2023. No new tax measures are possible. The next two articles will authorize the state to borrow funds, and the social security system to do likewise, by raising the debt ceiling of the Central Agency of Social Security Organizations.

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