France’s budget returns after 31–3 defeat

France's National Assembly finance committee voted down the revenue half of the 2027 state budget on Friday, by 31 votes to 3 with 2 abstentions (LCP, AFP via Boursorama). The defeat does not kill the government's tax plan. When the full chamber opens debate on 13 October, it starts again from the original text (Assembly timetable). Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu now has to find a majority that the committee could not.

A big no vote with no shared reason

The committee was voting on its own version of the budget, rewritten over three days of amendments (AFP via La Gazette France). Only Ensemble pour la République, President Emmanuel Macron's group in the Assembly, voted for it, while the centrist Démocrates abstained (LCP).

The no votes came from opposite directions. Opposition deputies, from the radical left to the far right, attacked the government's choices on taxes and savings. Much of the government's own camp rejected the changes those opponents had written in (AFP via La Gazette France). Added together, the votes describe a missing majority rather than a rival budget.

What comes back to the floor

The committee's edits show where resistance sits. Deputies removed a government plan to shrink a tax break for pensioners, which ministers expected to raise around €1.4 billion (Le Monde). They also deleted a new levy that would have made local governments contribute to the savings effort (adopted amendment).

French budget rules undo those deletions. On a budget's first reading, the full Assembly debates the government's text, not the committee's (French Constitution). The pension change and the local levy therefore return as live proposals, and anyone who wants them gone must defeat them again on the floor.

The revenue vote carries a bigger risk. If the chamber rejects the revenue half, the whole bill counts as rejected at first reading and deputies never get to debate spending (France's budget framework law). That vote is scheduled for 20 October (Assembly timetable).

Who stands in Lecornu's way

Lecornu governs without a majority of his own, and two groups matter most for different reasons. The Socialists control the earliest exit. On 8 October they filed a motion to throw out the bill before any article is debated, and they have hinted they may drop the restraint that helped him last year (Le Monde).

Les Républicains, on the right, oppose one of the measures now returning. Their leader Laurent Wauquiez rejects taking more from pensioners and proposes other savings, while insisting his group will not play the "little game" of bringing the government down (BFMTV). Refusing to topple a government is not the same as voting for its budget, and neither party has promised a yes.

France's partners are watching for their own reasons. On 8 October, eurozone finance ministers urged Paris to pass its 2027 budget to calm markets, and Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said a sound budget would help reassure investors (Reuters). Their concern has a legal side. France has been under the EU's excessive-deficit procedure, the process for pushing a country's deficit back below 3% of GDP, since July 2024, and in January 2025 EU finance ministers set the path it was required to follow (Council of the EU).

The European Commission and eurozone ministers judge France's budget as a whole, not clause by clause. Each revenue measure that falls makes that deficit path harder to hold unless savings appear elsewhere. Because French debt sits at the heart of the euro area, investor nerves about Paris have already spread to other members' bonds and to the euro itself (To Brief).

Friday's vote settled less than its margin suggests. The committee found no majority for its amended revenue plan, and Lecornu must now build one for the government's original proposals, starting with the two measures the committee has already struck out.