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After tense negotiations, a joint parliamentary committee agreed on a final version of the long-overdue 2025 budget plan.
French lawmakers reached a compromise deal in Paris Friday on this year’s long-overdue state budget plan.The panel of seven MPs and seven senators was composed mainly of French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s supporters and did not consider the votes of the representatives from the left and the far-right National Rally party. However, the Socialist Party representatives claimed they managed to score some “victories” in the negotiations, including the promise not to axe 4,000 jobs in public education and additional resources for public hospitals. “The budget is not ours, so the only role we could play, as we have been doing for months, is to have spared the French people a certain amount of suffering,” said the president of the Socialists in the National Assembly, Boris Vallaud, to a group of reporters. But will these “victories” be enough for the centre-left party to abstain from voting against Bayrou’s government next week? High-stakes vote on the horizonThe final draft will be submitted to a vote in the National Assembly on Monday, and the Socialists have not yet made a decision, Vallaud told a group of reporters on Friday.Both the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) and far-right National Rally (RN) representatives expressed their discontent with the bill. Eric Coquerel, an LFI MP, said the bill was “worse than the Barnier budget,” referring to Bayrou’s predecessor, who was ousted after the left and far-right joined forces in a successful no-confidence vote in December. It is unclear whether the RN will back a no-confidence vote. Since Bayrou’s government does not have a majority in the lower house, the prime minister will likely use Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the bill without a vote. This, in turn, will open the door for a possible no-confidence vote, which threatens the survival of the recently appointed minority government. A total of 288 votes are needed to topple the government. Towards the end of 2024, Michel Barnier was toppled by MPs after he used the constitutional tool to ram the social security budget plan without a vote. France has been in the throes of a political deadlock since French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly after his party suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the far-right in the European elections in June. The snap elections ended with a fragmented lower house and no clear majority.
