Five weeks after his appointment, Prime Minister Michel Barnier has gotten right into the thick of it. The examination of the 2025 budget bill began on Friday morning in the Assemblée Nationale's Finance Committee. It had been presented at the Council of Ministers on Thursday evening, October 10, before President Emmanuel Macron, who stayed silent. The challenges are great: an abysmal national debt, an uncontrollably widening deficit, an explosive international situation, unpredictable market reactions, and a fractured Assemblée Nationale without a majority. "It's a bit like climbing the Himalayas without mittens," said former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve (in office 2016-2017), anticipating trouble when speaking on the television channel France 5, on October 9.

Barnier wants Parliament to adopt his cost-cutting budget by the end of December, breaking with those of his four predecessors. He plans to cut civil servant jobs, raise taxes for big business and the highest-earning households, levy a contribution from pensioners, and reduce subsidies to local authorities, with the aim of reducing public deficit to be reduced from 6.1% to 5% of GDP.

While the left unsurprisingly denounced it as an "austerity" budget, and the far right as a financial effort that was "very poorly distributed" between rich and poor, criticism also came from the presidential coalition, and in particular from Macron's party, which accounts for 95 MPs in the frail coalition supporting the government. "We obviously support the undertaking to straighten out public finances," said Renaissance MP Thomas Cazenave, who served as public accounts minister in the previous government. "But we don't agree on certain subjects, in particular the increase in social contributions for companies," pushing up the cost of labor, a break with the line held by Macron's supporters.

The freeze on the level of pensions has also gone down badly among Macronists, as has the increase in taxes on electricity – "the only low-carbon energy we produce," pointed out one elected official – and the surtax on the biggest companies' profits, which former interior minister Gérald Darmanin spoke out against on the broadcaster Franceinfo, on October 3, warning it would weaken France's attractiveness to investors. Macron himself had said, in Berlin, on Wednesday, October 2, that "overtaxation" was not the answer. However, the Macron-aligned parliamentary group has been reluctant to get up in arms about tax increases on large corporations and the wealthiest households, measures which are, at first glance, popular.

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