PARIS — Former French Economy and Finance Minister Eric Lombard said his old boss, former Prime Minister François Bayrou, miscalculated by holding a confidence vote after unveiling plans to slash the country’s 2026 budget by nearly €44 billion.
When asked at POLITICO’s competitiveness summit in Paris on Thursday if he had any regrets during his tenure, Lombard said his “first regret” was the vote, which appeared doomed from the start.
“It seemed to me like a risky gamble, one that didn’t pay off,” Lombard said.
Bayrou took lawmakers by surprise in late August when he announced that he would put his unpopular budget, which included slashing two public holidays, to a vote. He unsuccessfully tried to frame the vote as a referendum on the need for drastic action to rein in France’s sky-high budget deficit.
Lombard said that the vote put an end to talks on a compromise with the center-left Socialists, whose backing Bayrou’s government had been courting for their spending plan.
“That agreement was still possible,” said Lombard, who was considered a bridge between Macron’s centrists and the Socialists.
Lombard said it is “imperative” that the budget deficit for next year not exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product. The figure is projected to hit 5.4 percent of GDP this year.
Sébastien Lecornu, the outgoing prime minister whose resignation Monday set off a political crisis, signaled Wednesday that France could soften its deficit reduction target to 5 percent of GDP from 4.7 percent, the figure Lecornu initially put forward.
French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to name Lecornu’s successor by Friday evening.
End of an era
In terms of trade, Lombard called for more aggressive domestic policies to boost European companies in key industries in the face of stiff competition from their Chinese and U.S. rivals.
“Free trade is over, it’s dead,” Lombard said, noting that the U.S. and China stopped obeying the international trade rulebook a long time ago.
Lombard, who was still a minister when the European Union concluded a trade truce with the United States, acknowledged it was a “bad deal” but defended the European Commission for striking it anyway to avoid a trade war with Washington.
“We didn’t have a better one,” he said.
Europe, he argued, didn’t have the means to stand up to Trump as it did not have the economic weight of China, he said.
“We faced an attack, and that was our response,” he said.
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