Paris, France – French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday after managing to push through the Social Security budget, paving the way for the adoption of the 2026 accounts.
The text, which still has to pass through the Senate, was supported by 247 deputies, mostly from the bloc close to President Emmanuel Macron, the socialists, and some members of the center-right, against 234 votes against, mainly from Marine Le Pen’s far-right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed).
After weeks of negotiations, Lecornu achieved an important parliamentary victory, but he will have to continue fighting for the approval of the 2026 general budget before New Year’s Eve.
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”Starting tomorrow, we will have to work on adopting a budget for the State. It will be difficult. Perhaps even more so than in recent weeks. But the Government’s mindset will not change: the public interest comes first, without giving in to feverishness or electoral agendas,” the prime minister wrote on social media after the text was adopted.
Until the last moment, Lecornu was aware that the result would be close and acknowledged that a defeat would have been difficult to move forward, which in turn would have put President Emmanuel Macron, the head of government’s supporters, in a delicate position.
For weeks, the prime minister, who renounced the parliamentary mechanism that allowed him to adopt the budget without a vote, has been making concessions, especially to the Socialists, who secured the suspension of the 2023 pension reform.
The latest compromises were granted this morning to the ecologists, whose 38 deputies appeared to be key and who ultimately abstained by a majority.
The result provoked harsh criticism from its former left-wing partners.
”They have saved Macron,” denounced the president of the LFI parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, while the far-right accused the government of throwing itself into the arms of the Socialists and multiplying spending, which will deepen the country’s debt.
Macron’s former prime minister, Édouard Philippe, at the head of a group of 34 deputies, also criticized the accounts and the abstention of his parliamentarians.
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