The French Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornumade the decision this Monday to apply article 49.3 of the Constitution to approve the 2026 budgets due to the inability to articulate a majority in the National Assembly, divided into three irreconcilable blocks since the early legislative elections of 2024.
Lecornu breaks his promise. In autumn, the third prime minister of Emmanuel Macron So far this legislature, he promised the opposition that he would renounce this clause, which annuls parliamentary debate and approves legislative proposals without a prior vote, with the only condition that no motion of censure against the Government is carried out in the first 24 hours.
If 289 or more deputies vote in favor of a motion of censure within the established period, the Government and its accounts would fall. It wouldn’t be the first time it happens. One of Lecornu’s predecessors in office, the former European commissioner Michel Barniersuffered this fate in December 2024.
But it does not seem that Lecornu is going to follow in Barnier’s footsteps because, although France Insoumise (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced the presentation of an “immediate” motion of censure in view of the Prime Minister’s decision, the initiative will not have the support of the Socialist Party, as the deputy announced Jérôme Guedjwho considers that now is not the time to “get fussy.”
“A height of ridiculousness for the socialists who boasted of the abandonment of this 49.3. Against this budget and for the dignity of Parliament, we will present a motion of censure against the Government,” wrote the president of the LFI parliamentary group, Mathilde Panoton the social network X.
script twist
Lecornu changed his position last week when he realized that he could not convince the different parliamentary groups to advance the budgets by majority in the Assembly. For this reason, the head of Government channeled his efforts not into negotiating the content of the accounts, but into preventing the opposition from voting in favor of a motion of censure that would blow up his second Government. The first only lasted twenty-seven days.
The prime minister tried to win the support of the Socialist Party from the first moment with a battery of social measures. Last Friday, he announced from the esplanade of the Matignon Palace the freezing of income tax, the generalization of student meals at 1 euro and the creation of 2,000 positions in national education, among other spending measures that, according to the estimates of The Worldwould cost the State coffers more than 7,000 million euros.
The Socialist Party boasts of having also achieved the suspension of the controversial pension reform, Macron’s star measure, which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. Macron’s prime minister also confirmed this Sunday that taxes paid by large companies will increase significantly, compared to the initial version of the finance bill for 2026.
“A new political crisis would weaken our country and would weigh even more directly and heavily on activity and employment,” Lecornu told businessmen, through a letter in which he promised “the stabilization of all tax regulations applicable to companies.”
The head of the socialist parliamentary group, Boris Vallaudassured that these measures “make it possible to contemplate the non-censorship of the budget.”
Some voices from the Macronist bloc regret that Lecornu has tried to please the left bench. Several deputies of the macronist Ensemble, according to The Sunday Journalconsider their fellow socialists “masters of the art of blackmail.”
Others consider, however, that Lecornu had no other way out. “49.3 doesn’t make me jump for joy, it doesn’t excite me, but did Sébastien Lecornu have other options?” declared the Macronist deputy. Prisca Thevenot. “There comes a time when you have to move forward; it is the least bad of the solutions.”
“Sébastien Lecornu’s measures to buy the socialists are the imitation with which the settlers bought the indigenous people in some countries,” reacted, for his part, the vice president of the National Regroupment (RN), Sébastien Chenu. The leaders of the far-right party, Marine Le Pen and its leader Jordan Bardella, made it clear that “censure is necessary”, but they avoided confirming at first whether they would present their own motion or vote in favor of the LFI’s.
The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleaudefended the need to activate the ‘decree’, but rejected the content of the accounts: “The budget proposed by the Government takes up all the socialist ingredients that have led to the decline of France: more spending and more taxes that weigh down and discourage those who produce.”
Also leader of the traditional right of The Republicans, Retailleau implicitly acknowledged that he has set his eyes on the Elysée, and that it will be then when he can resolve this situation. “This budget enshrines the fact that we will have to wait for the presidential election to carry out the reforms that the country needs,” he noted.