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France’s Socialist party leader has threatened to bring down Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s fragile minority government by Monday if he does not agree to levy higher taxes on the country’s wealthiest, as discussions on the country’s 2026 budget intensify.
Olivier Faure, whose party holds a swing vote in the hung parliament, told broadcaster BFMTV on Friday: “If there is no change . . . by Monday, the Socialists will vote against” the budget plans and call a no-confidence vote.
The threat serves as a reminder of the perilous position of the French government as Lecornu seeks to avoid becoming the third premier to be voted out by parliament since President Emmanuel Macron’s ill-fated decision to call snap elections in June 2024.
Lecornu agreed to suspend Macron’s pensions reforms in his preliminary budget text last week, as an olive branch to the Socialists that allowed his government to survive two no-confidence votes earlier this month.
However, the 69 Socialist deputies and other leftwing allies in the 577-strong National Assembly are seeking further concessions, as deputies began to debate the income section of the budget law in parliament on Friday.
Among the measures proposed by the Socialists is the so-called Zucman tax — named after its author, the economist Gabriel Zucman — which would require people with fortunes above €100mn to pay a minimum of 2 per cent tax annually on all their assets, including their companies, shares of companies and unrealised gains.
The measure was rejected by a parliamentary committee earlier this week but will be debated by the assembly on Friday. Supporters have said the tax would bring in as much as €20bn a year, but critics say the returns would be only about €5bn because many of the wealthiest are preparing to leave France or optimise their taxes.
Faure did not insist on the Zucman tax specifically, but said the government needed to increase tax revenues by €15 to €20bn, and that his party’s preference was for the measure to target the wealthiest.
“I want new sources of income. I want us to have enough money in our pockets to avoid to take from the pockets of average, ordinary French people who can take no more,” he said.
While he has rejected the prospect of a Zucman tax, Lecornu has proposed levying taxes on holding companies and maintaining a windfall tax on large companies.
Lecornu’s budget proposal envisages €30bn of savings in 2026 in an effort to bring the deficit to 4.7 per cent of GDP next year, compared with 5.4 per cent in 2025. But he has stated that he is prepared for that figure to reach 5 per cent, signalling his willingness to make more concessions.
The budget talks are set to be particularly tortuous after Lecornu promised last week not to use a constitutional tool that allows the budget to be adopted without parliamentary debates. The move, another concession to the Socialists, has opened up all budget areas to parliamentary negotiations.
The talks come as Lecornu faces mounting pressure to fix the public finances.
Last week, Standard & Poor’s cut France’s credit rating to A+ over concerns that debt will rise more than anticipated. Moody’s, the only big rating agency to still consider France an AA-rated country, decided in a surprise move on Friday evening to keep the rating at Aa3, but moved the outlook to negative.
“The decision to change the outlook to negative reflects the increased risk that the fragmentation of the country’s political landscape will continue to impair the functioning of France’s legislative institutions,” the agency said in a statement.
