France’s PM to Force Budget Through Parliament in Risky Move

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou (L) delivers a general policy statement to MPs at the National Assembly in Paris on Jan. 14, 2025. Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou will use special constitutional powers to try to force the 2025 budget, but it is a risky move as it will trigger a no-confidence vote.

Speaking to La Tribune Dimanche on Feb. 2, Bayrou said he will use a controversial constitutional tool called Article 49.3 to pass legislation without a parliamentary vote.

“Now we have to go straight to adoption,” Bayrou said. “A country like ours cannot be without a budget. The only way to do that is to make the government responsible.”

Article 49.3

Article 49.3 allows the government to pass legislation without a vote and was written into the French Constitution to bypass deadlocks on important matters, but it also empowers opposition parties to table motions of no confidence.

Bayrou is navigating a divided Parliament, which has made it increasingly difficult for the government to pass the 2025 budget. France is planning 60 billion euros (about $62.6 billion) of spending cuts and tax hikes in a bid to reduce its spiraling fiscal deficit.

The country’s debt is projected to soar to more than 3 trillion euros (about $3.13 trillion) by 2025, with public debt hovering at about 110 percent of gross domestic product.

No-Confidence Motion

The country’s four main left-wing forces, the Greens, the Socialists, the Communists, and hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement, have an agreement with a shared manifesto to run under one banner called the New Popular Front.

La France Insoumise has already announced its intention to table a no-confidence motion, supported by the Communists and the Greens. On Feb. 3, France 24 reported that the vote could take place on Feb. 5.

Boris Vallaud, president of the socialists’ parliamentary group, told Ouest France that while the question of a no-confidence vote is “on the table,” it had not made a decision yet.

The right-wing National Rally’s leader, Marine Le Pen, has not given her party any voting instructions yet.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is getting squeezed by both sides of the political spectrum to pass through the bill.

The collapse of the Barnier government in early December 2024 meant France was unable to pass the budget before the year-end deadline.

Outed former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier also invoked Article 49.3 and was subsequently punished by the left and the right and voted out by a no-confidence vote.

Immigration

Centrist politician Bayrou was named the new French prime minister in December 2024, but he is already on shaky ground.

Last week, the French budget talks were thrown into doubt after Socialist Party officials suspended negotiations in protest over remarks he made about immigration.

In a television interview with French news channel LCI on Jan. 27, Bayrou said that the country is at risk of feeling overwhelmed by immigration.

“I think that the meeting of cultures is positive,“ he said. ”But as soon as you have the feeling of a submersion, of no longer recognizing your country, of no longer recognizing the ways of life or culture, from that moment on, you have rejection.”

Bayrou repeated his immigration comments in the French Senate on Jan. 29, with Socialist parliamentary leader Boris Vallaud accusing him of embracing far-right rhetoric.

“If you govern with the prejudices of the far-right, we will end up being governed by the far-right, and you will have been its accomplice,” Vallaud said.

“It’s not the words ... that are shocking but the reality,” Bayrou responded. “An entire community of French departments is facing waves of illegal immigration, reaching 25 percent of the population. And it is a despair, who can say that this is not true?”

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.