Jordan Bardella, the party chief of France’s Rassemblement National (RN), warned on Monday that it would not hesitate to bring down the government over a budget that prime minister Michel Barnier has said is needed to tackle the country’s debt.
Negotiations between Mr Barnier and the RN to find a compromise on the draft budget stalled ahead of a key vote in the National Assembly expected later on Monday, raising the risk that the minority government could fall as early as this week.
The budget’s fate and that of Mr Barnier’s administration remain largely in the hands of Marine Le Pen’s far-right RN, the biggest single party and a key voting bloc in the National Assembly.
“The RN will trigger the mechanism to vote the censure unless there is a last-minute miracle and Barnier changes his draft law between now and 3pm,” Bardella told RTL radio on Monday.
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“I don’t have much hope he will do so given how he has ignored and scorned us [and our proposals] in recent months.”
Since being named prime minister in September, Mr Barnier has been rushing to pass a €60 billion fiscal package for 2025, including significant tax increases, all aimed at reducing a deficit that stands at roughly 6 per cent of national output.
Investors have become increasingly concerned that he will fail to do so, plunging France deeper into political instability just as the economy sputters.
Ms Le Pen has insisted all the RN’s “red line” demands must be met if the government wants to avoid a no-confidence vote. On Sunday, finance minister Antoine Armand said no further changes would be made to the contested security spending bill, one of three bills that make up the budget, although a government spokesperson said on Monday morning that they were “still open” to further discussions with the RN.
Without a majority in parliament, crafting a budget has proved tortuous for Mr Barnier, forcing him to make concessions not only to the RN but also to MPs in his own camp. Those tweaks have cut about €10 billion of planned savings out of the social security budget and will probably put Mr Barnier’s goal of bringing the deficit down to 5 per cent by the end of 2025 out of reach.
On Thursday, Mr Barnier abandoned a planned increase to electricity taxes, a measure fiercely opposed by the RN and other parties. But Ms Le Pen continued to make other demands such as scrapping plans to temporarily freeze pensions or lower reimbursements for medicines and doctors’ visits.
If Mr Barnier’s government was voted down this week, it would be only the second time French lawmakers have taken such a step since the Fifth Republic was established in 1958. It would also make Mr Barnier the shortest-serving prime minister during the same period.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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