Since his appointment as French PM at the beginning of December, François Bayrou has had the difficult task of passing a budget for 2025 in the absence of a majority in the National Assembly. To this end, he has begun negotiations with those most likely to lend their support: the centre-left and the socialists. But the negotiations are faltering and there seems to be no way out of the crisis.
Michel Barnier’s previous government was toppled by MPs on December 4th over a finance bill for 2025 that was condemned by both Left and Right for being unfair and ineffective. The new centrist prime minister now has a very clear but delicate mission: to create a stronger proposal that will persuade a majority of MPs on a bill that has to set France’s budgetary guidelines amid significant public spending deficits and pressure from EU institutions and financial markets.
Since the beginning of January, Bayrou has been seeking allies on the Left, with the socialists. He is said to be negotiating a ‘non-censure agreement,’ meaning that the socialists would agree to not vote in favour of a motion of censure proposed against him in exchange for a budget plan that satisfies their demands. At the heart of the agreement is a possible six-month ‘suspension’ of the pension reform while it is renegotiated. The socialists believe that progress is possible through continued dialogue between the government and the unions, particularly on the most contentious aspects of the reform: the retirement age of 64, long careers, arduous occupations, and ‘broken’ careers. Socialist party first secretary Olivier Faure is calling for “a compromise” to avoid “chaos.”
For more than thirty years, François Bayrou has been chasing the support of the socialists, as when in 2007, for the presidential election, he pushed the socialist Ségolène Royal against the right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2012, he also called for a vote for socialist François Hollande against Sarkozy. As a result, his centrist position has always had the unfortunate tendency to lean to the Left. This time, as he takes over as head of government, it is clear that he is pinning his hopes more on the Left than on the Right.
Given the initial elements of the new finance bill, the Right will be very wary of giving Bayrou its support. In particular, the prime minister is exploring the possibility of increasing the inheritance tax—a subject causing a furore on the Right, given that France has one of the highest inheritance tax rates in the world.
The clock is ticking. Bayrou is due to deliver a general policy speech to the National Assembly on Tuesday, January 14th. The far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI) has already announced that it intends to propose a motion of censure as soon as the prime minister’s speech is delivered. Allied with the socialists in the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, LFI categorically refutes the socialists’ strategy of dialogue, and is calling for the pension reform to be repealed. The socialists’ negotiations are seen as “a stab in the back of the NFP programme.”
The Rassemblement National (RN) has not yet said whether it will support a motion of censure put forward by the Left. Without the votes of Marine Le Pen’s party, the motion has no chance of being adopted.
