PARIS — Prime Minister François Bayrou appeared to be signing his own political death warrant when he told the French this week that he would take away their holidays, freeze their welfare and cut billions from their health care.
Right on cue, the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen and hard-left France Unbowed of Jean-Luc M´elenchon fulminated that it was time to topple Bayrou because of his plan to squeeze the budget by an eye-watering €43.8 billion.
But as the smoke cleared it became clear there was method to the madness of the veteran centrist.
Bayrou is staking out a maximalist position — a high opening bid — from which he hopes to negotiate a budget deal in the fall. He is warning, after all, that Paris risks a Greek-style meltdown unless the parties can see reason and balance the books.
Fundamentally, he is also making an important political calculus about his adversaries — including Le Pen’s National Rally. With Le Pen eyeing the presidency in 2027, the far-right party may now be more reluctant to be perceived as a wrecker rather than a sober political force willing to act in the national interest.
While many in Le Pen’s party would like to force new elections, Bayrou is calculating she will ultimately back off because she herself would be unable to stand for office due to a fraud conviction.
Sprinkled through his budget address were bargaining chips for talks with parties across the political spectrum.
Lawmakers won’t formally debate the proposals until after the summer break, when the government will need the tacit support of at least one opposition group to pass its budget bill.
That leaves plenty of time for Bayrou to massage mainstream parties into supporting him.
Holiday hoax
If one announcement touched a nerve more than others it was Bayrou’s plan to scrap two holidays — potentially Easter Monday and Victory in Europe Day on May 8. The proposal shocked even his own camp.
Some opposition leaders realized they were probably being played.
The head of the Greens, Marine Tondelier, initially questioned Bayrou’s decision to eliminate the May 8 holiday but later told the LCI news network it was “a trap, a red herring,” and noted that Bayrou could reverse course in the haggling over the budget.
France’s hung parliament, which was born of last year’s snap election, is deeply fragmented and is roughly divided into three blocs: the far right, a centrist bloc affiliated with President Emmanuel Macron, and the left bloc. None of them command a majority of votes, meaning the two extremes need to gang up against the government in order to topple it.
Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier, tried unsuccessfully to negotiate his government’s survival with Le Pen’s National Rally.
Bayrou opted for a different strategy and clinched a temporary deal last winter with the Socialists (the most moderate group in the left alliance) to keep his government afloat and pass this year’s budget.
The government is seemingly pursuing the same strategy this time round, with Economy Minister Éric Lombard telling Bloomberg that a deal was “probably more likely” with the Socialists.
The National Rally also needs a solid argument to rock the boat, and the government isn’t going to hand them one. Shortly after the budget plan announcement, the government landed a rebate on the EU budget, a longtime demand of the National Rally.
“We want to appear reasonable, and we are also aware that we might inherit the situation tomorrow,” a party official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said ahead of the budget announcement.
Socialists’ dilemma
The key question, though, is which way the Socialists will jump.
Naturally, they mauled Bayrou’s two-hour austerity budget pitch as “unfair,” “brutal” and “unacceptable.” The party’s parliamentary group said: “As things stand, censuring the government is the only perspective.”
Strong stuff, but the Socialists tellingly stopped short of joining France’s other left-wing forces — the Greens, France Unbowed and the Communist Party — in calling for Bayrou’s immediate resignation.
Since Bayrou’s appointment last year, the party of François Hollande and François Mitterrand has oscillated between fierce opposition and uneasy compromise. This time is no different: harsh words, but no definitive break.
“We could eventually reach an agreement not to vote for a motion of no-confidence,” said Socialist lawmaker Philippe Brun, who leads the party’s budget negotiations. “But for that to happen, the government will need to significantly rework its proposal.”
After a decade of electoral disaster, the Socialists have clawed their way back to relevance, challenging the dominance that Mélenchon’s France Unbowed has built over the left in the past decade.
But the party is now deeply divided. About half want to chart a moderate course, while the rest are pushing to align with the broader (but more radical) left.
If Bayrou is forced out, Macron could call snap elections, reopening a bitter internal debate over potential alliances on the left. And it’s unclear how eager the center-leftists would be to jump back into campaign mode without first mending their internal rifts.
Also hinting at room for a negotiated compromise, Socialist group leader Boris Vallaud said his party would present an alternative plan ahead of the parliamentary budget debate. “There is not just one path,” he posted on X.
So, how many concessions can the Socialists extract from the government — and where are their red lines?
There’s a glimmer of hope that Bayrou and the Socialists could align on pursuing the rich.
Despite pressure from the center and the right to avoid tax hikes, the government has opened the door to a “solidarity contribution” from the country’s highest earners. A similar mechanism was included in this year’s budget and involved a 3 percent to 4 percent tax hike on annual incomes above €250,000 for individuals and €500,000 for households. Bayrou also vowed to slash ineffective tax breaks.
Other parties sense the Socialists could end up folding.
“There has to be some sort of a deal with the Socialists” that explains the shock measures unveiled by Bayrou, National Rally lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy told POLITICO after the budget presentation.
That vague promise of wealthier French citizens contributing more could indeed become a bargaining chip — though the Socialists say nothing is guaranteed, and doubt how far Macron’s allies will go in confronting the wealthy.
“We’re asking for an actual conversation,” said party leader Olivier Faure on BFMTV. “For now, there’s only one golden rule guiding this government: Never touch the ultra-rich.”
Bayrou’s allies play it cool
When presenting his draconian plan, Bayrou acknowledged he wasn’t certain he could count on his own coalition allies — a big risk. But his allies have so far been the only ones not to slam the plan, knowing a constructive attitude could earn them concessions during summer talks.
The right-wing Les Républicains (LR), part of the coalition supporting Bayrou, recognized some of the merits of his plan, especially on cutting spending.
On Wednesday, Laurent Wauquiez, who leads LR lawmakers in the National Assembly, acknowledged that the budget “has the merit of looking for solutions” although it could still be “corrected and improved.”
A similar message came from Macron’s camp, which supports the overall plan but is also planning to suggest some tweaks.
During a Wednesday morning cabinet meeting, Macron lauded Bayrou’s move “for the virtue of courage, boldness and lucidity,” as government spokesperson Sophie Primas put it.
Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who now heads Macron’s party, welcomed Bayrou’s plan, in particular his promise to look at reforming France’s unemployment benefits. In a social media post Attal acknowledged that his party’s position “is without doubt not very popular,” but slammed opposition parties as “irresponsible.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that all Bayrou government supporters are OK with the €43.8 billion budget cut.
Another former prime minister, Édouard Philippe, who has already launched a bid to run in the next presidential election, was one of the most critical voices from the center-right camp.
“It has the merit of being a contingency plan. But it also has its limitations,” Philippe told Le Parisien newspaper.
“Almost nothing in what [Bayrou] proposed solves” the structural problems that fuel the country’s deficit, he added.
France’s political landscape is certainly highly divided, but that also means there are deals out there for Bayrou to strike.
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