Under pressure from an unyielding budget deficit, François Bayrou’s French government is considering implementing a fiscal freeze, or a ‘blank year,’ for 2026, which would result in a massive freeze on public spending. The solution, which is not a miracle cure and has side effects, would nevertheless save up to €28 billion.
The French term ‘blank year’ (année blanche) encompasses a whole range of restrictive measures aimed at curbing public spending: a freeze on spending, a freeze on income tax rates, and a freeze on social benefits linked to inflation, all amounting to a total of €28 billion—out of the €40 billion that still needs to be found in the 2026 budget.
A fiscal freeze has already been implemented in other countries. Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands have used it when they had public finance problems.
The French government has been considering this last-resort solution for several years without ever fully committing to it. Last year, a ‘mini fiscal freeze’ was implemented, i.e., a freeze on government spending excluding local spending and social benefits, with the distribution left to the discretion of the ministries. This time, it would involve freezing social benefits (pensions, family allowances, housing assistance) without adjusting for inflation, which could weaken the purchasing power of the families with the most modest means. At the local government level, it will result in budget cuts across a range of services that depend on state transfers, including childcare and social housing. Freezing tax rates could lead to an increase in tax revenues: if tax brackets are not adjusted to keep pace with inflation, low-income households could automatically move into a higher bracket, even though their real income has not changed. The fiscal freeze would therefore have the same effect as a tax increase, without the name.
For Agnès Verdier-Molinié, director of the IFRAP Foundation, who has been denouncing the French government’s deficit-spending excesses for years, a freeze is currently the only viable solution in the very short term. However, she pointed out, it must be implemented without freezing tax rates—otherwise, it would effectively be a tax increase, which France cannot afford.
The middle and lower classes would be hit the hardest by a fiscal freeze, exacerbating the already widespread feeling among French people that they are paying more and more in taxes for increasingly inadequate public services. The subject is therefore highly sensitive: it was for having considered under-indexing pensions in relation to inflation that the previous government, led by Michel Barnier, collapsed in December 2024.
In any case, the ongoing debates within the government reflect a high level of anxiety and an inability to tackle the deficit problem other than by seeking temporary solutions to plug the gap.
