France’s Prime Minister Francois Bayrou gives an address to unveil the main guidelines of France’s 2026 budget, a financial and political puzzle since it foresees a significant tightening of 40 billion in savings, in addition to increasing the military budget, in Paris on July 15, 2025.
Thomas Samson / AFP
Prime Minister François Bayrou undertook the perilous task of presenting his plan for the 2026 budget to the French National Assembly on Tuesday, July 15th. On the agenda was a little over €40 billion in savings—while the head of state is calling for a substantial increase in military spending; according to some sources, up to €6,5 billion within 2 years.
Bayrou had shrouded the drafting of his budget in secrecy in order to avoid negative rumours—a no-confidence vote, social unrest—about the reception it would receive when the time came. Ahead of his press conference, he acknowledged the inevitable unpopularity of his proposals, making a series of deliberately provocative statements: “I have chosen to live with risk. I knew it was an extreme sport. What I am about to announce, no one has ever dared to do in France. Everyone will take responsibility, and I will take mine,” he told the centre-right weekly Le Point.
However, there is nothing revolutionary about the solutions put forward by Bayrou in terms of boldness and risk-taking. His goal is to reduce the deficit to 4.6% of GDP by 2026, with savings of €43.6 billion—slightly more than the €40 billion announced.
True to his political line—he is one of the few French politicians to have warned about the burden of debt for decades—Bayrou compared France to a household that borrows recklessly to cover its daily expenses. “This is called over-indebtedness,” he insisted, calling it a “curse” on the country. His plan aims to stabilise the debt by 2029.
For 2026, Bayrou predicts that the state will not spend a penny more than in 2025—excluding military spending and debt servicing. This is the famous ‘blank year’ of fiscal freeze that has been talked about for several weeks. No increases in tax brackets, benefits, or pensions are planned, despite inflation, and there will be no pay raises in government departments.
The health budget is one of the prime minister’s main targets. He is calling for “patient responsibility”—an increase in deductibles and regulation of state coverage for long-term conditions. Added to this is a series of small measures designed to scrape together a few billion here and there: a solidarity contribution for the wealthiest, “to be defined”; reform of the tax allowance on pensions; and the elimination of all kinds of tax and social loopholes. For the first time, a government is considering touching pensions, which until now had been considered taboo. For the ‘Nicolas’ generation, pensioners are among the privileged few in the system, at the expense of active contributors.
In terms of controlling government spending, Bayrou announced that one in three civil servants retiring would not be replaced and that “unproductive agencies” would be abolished: “Several hundred, perhaps between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs will be cut,” he said proudly. But what are 1,000 to 1,500 jobs when France has accumulated thousands of billions in debt? The prime minister finally stated that he wanted to tackle tax evasion, public subsidies, social benefits, health spending, and late payments by businesses by improving both the detection and collection of these.
Among all the proposals, one has been the subject of controversy, as only the French know how to do: the elimination of two bank holidays, namely Easter Monday and May 8th. In France, tampering with public holidays is always considered sacrilegious. On the Right, there is outrage over the abolition of Easter Monday, which, although not directly a religious holiday, allows families to get together for Easter, which is still widely celebrated even by those who no longer practise the religion. On the Left, the abolition of May 8th is seen as a sign of Bayrou’s supposed “fascism”: wanting to get rid of the commemoration of the end of the fight against Nazism is necessarily suspect … forgetting that General de Gaulle, who had no lessons to learn in the fight against Nazism, abolished May 8th as a public holiday. But the voices pointing out the real problem are very timid: working two more days will not save the state any money and will not translate into more money for the French people.
In the aftermath of these announcements, the French press remains cautious. The prime minister’s determination is discreetly welcomed in the centre, while elsewhere, the solutions put forward are met with scepticism. The faint murmurs of a no-confidence motion can be heard once again. “If François Bayrou does not revise his proposal, we will bring him down,” Rassemblement National (RN) leader Marine Le Pen has already warned. The unions are lambasting a plan that will mainly affect employees. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, has already called on the socialist party and the RN to unite in order to bring down the proposal through a motion of no confidence. As in the past, the alliance between the RN and LFI will not be enough to bring down the government, a manoeuvre that requires the votes of the socialists. At the end of his speech, the prime minister called on the political parties to act responsibly. He is in a minority in the national assembly and knows that the budget discussions in the autumn will be tough and his opponents will show no mercy.
He claims that he is “not seeking to preserve himself and stay in power, but wants to change things, whatever the risk.” Unfortunately, to change things, a little more risk and boldness would have been necessary. The time for genuine state reform, encouraging the economy and the resolute targeting of undue social welfare spending linked to immigration has not yet come.
