From the outset, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that, after an initial failed attempt, the ministers in his new team would be "a government with a mission": "to give France a budget before the end of the year." The extraordinarily tight budget schedule prompted the Elysée Palace and the prime minister's office to announce the government's composition on Sunday evening, October 12, so that the draft budget could be approved by the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, and then immediately submitted to Parliament. Will the mission be accomplished? And what will the result be? Here is an overview in six questions, each a political test in itself.
This is the issue at stake in the coming days. It is the first real test for the government. For President Emmanuel Macron and Lecornu, it is essential that France start 2026 with a proper budget. The content of it seems almost secondary.
After a technical hiccup in 1980, the very question of whether there would be a budget had not arisen for 45 years. But at the end of 2024, the political crisis blocked an initial budget vote and forced the adoption of a minimalist "special law" temporarily renewing the previous year's spending.
The issue is back on the table. If another crisis were to upend the government or the Assemblée Nationale in the days or weeks ahead, the traditional budget adoption process would be cut short. Without a budget law passed in time, France would once again have to rely on an emergency procedure to keep public services operating at all costs. "The situation is serious, but there are still ways forward," said Roland Lescure, the new finance minister, trying to sound reassuring. "We'll get there."
This question also seemed extraneous until recent weeks. It appeared clear that the primary goal of the 2026 budget was to seriously tackle France's public deficit – one of the highest in Europe – to prevent spiraling debt.
In July, Lecornu's predecessor, François Bayrou, expressed his ambition to reduce the deficit in one year from 5.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 4.6%, an effort of about €22.5 billion.
But in the draft finalized on October 2, Lecornu settled on a slightly less strict target of 4.7% of GDP. Then, on October 8, he mentioned the possibility that the deficit would only be reduced "to between 4.7% and 5%." The deficit could thus decrease by only 0.4 percentage points of GDP – half as much as Bayrou had aimed for.
Given the political gridlock, many experts anticipate the deficit will stagnate or worsen slightly. The European Commission is expecting a shortfall of 5.6% of GDP in 2025 and 5.7% in 2026. That outcome is only logical, according to some economists. Emmanuel Combe, economics professor at Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, said coalition governments are structurally less inclined toward fiscal discipline: Representing varied electoral interests, they often struggle to agree on measures to reduce deficits. In France's case, the target that emerges from these debates will serve as a test for investors and markets.
To reduce the deficit, there is no choice but to cut some public spending or increase some revenue. The balance between the two is a key political marker. In recent years, Macron's governments have presented their budgets as focusing on spending cuts, even though almost all deficit reduction actually came from higher levies. The 2026 budget may follow suit.
For now, the bill includes several measures to raise taxes on the wealthiest, maintain an "exceptional" levy on large corporate profits, limit certain tax breaks, and keep income tax and social security tax brackets frozen despite inflation – all steps that should boost revenue.
The savings, by contrast, remain vague. The draft only calls for eliminating 2,000 civil service positions. One thing is certain: defense spending will not be cut. Confronted with the "hardening of the world," Lecornu, a former defense minister, declared on Monday that the already-promised €6.7 billion increase in the military budget was "essential."
Writer Edouard Louis forcefully reminds us in his latest book, Que faire de la littérature ? ("What To Do With Literature?"), that beyond the rhetoric, politics has real-world consequences. "When I was a child, one day a medicine was no longer reimbursed, to save money," the writer recalls. "It was a decision by [president] Jacques Chirac and [health minister] Xavier Bertrand, and suddenly my father no longer had access to that medicine. He had stomach pains, suddenly, because of a political decision."
The 2026 budget will also be judged on these grounds: Beyond the numbers, what impact will it have on the daily lives of French people? It is hard to say for now. The answer will depend notably on whether the contested 2023 pension reform is suspended, and whether Lecornu adopts the measures Bayrou had planned to limit sick leave and medical reimbursements.
Lecornu excluded the Zucman tax on billionaires' wealth from his budget proposal. He is planning other measures targeting the wealthiest, but on a smaller scale. In particular, a tax on non-business assets held by family holding companies.
Beyond that, the most telling test of tax justice will likely center on the so-called Dutreil Pact, one of the main mechanisms that allows entrepreneurs to avoid inheritance tax. In a month, a report from the Court of Accounts, France's public audit institution, is expected to finally shed light on this tax break, estimating its cost to the government at around €5 billion – far from the €800 million previously cited by the Finance Ministry.
After this truth-telling exercise, will lawmakers amend the budget bill to exclude at least non-business assets from this tax break, as some MPs from both the left and the right are demanding? Behind the scenes, business leaders are already lobbying fiercely.
Under France's Fifth Republic, political debate – especially over the budget – was for a long time settled by the existence of a stable majority and by tools available to the government, such as Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows certain bills to be passed without a vote.
Since 2022, the absence of a majority has changed everything. "And now, we no longer have 49.3 either," said a person at the Finance Ministry, since Lecornu announced on October 3 that he would not use it. "That means the budget bill now on the table is just a starting point, set to be modified."
The new political order should have pushed leaders to learn the art of mutual compromise over the past two years, but that has not happened, political scientist Florent Gougou said in a September interview with Le Monde. To overcome the crisis, will they finally "adapt to new ways of thinking based on negotiation and compromise," as he suggested? If this emerges after the votes of no confidence that have been announced, the budget debate will provide the answer. A decisive democratic test for what comes next.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.