The upper house, with a right-centrist majority which supports the government, validated the finance bill by 217 votes to 105. Socialists, ecologists and communists voted against.
More than three months after its submission to Parliament, the draft state budget for 2025 finally passed the Senate stage on Thursday, a first step for the Bayrou government, which is still seeking to negotiate its survival with the socialists, still very uplifted.
Initiated by Michel Barnier in October, rejected by the National Assembly at first reading, suspended after the censure of the former Prime Minister and finally taken up by François Bayrou, this finance bill (PLF) was adopted by 217 votes to 105.
The majority right-centrist alliance, support of the government, voted for, unlike the entire left, including the socialist group for whom “the account is not there”.
What's next?
For the government, the hardest part begins, with the convening on January 30 of a joint committee (CMP)meeting of seven senators and seven deputies responsible for reaching a compromise text. Without doubt one of the last opportunities to integrate concessions likely to resist censorship.
Crucial for the State which is currently slowing down under the exceptional regime of a special law passed at the end of the year, the budget represents an almost insoluble equation for the executive, deprived of an absolute majority in the National Assembly but summoned by Brussels to restore public finances.
And the government hopes to be able to promulgate the budget before the end of February, opposition from the left remains very strong: if the Socialist Party did not vote for the first motion of censure targeting Prime Minister François Bayrou, it increases the pressure on budgetary texts.
“An austerity budget”
It is “an austerity budget that digs into the pockets of those who did not create the problem”launched the leader of the socialist senators on the budget, Thierry Cozic.
“Do not think that our clemency will happen automatically”he added to the attention of the Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard, calling on him to make new concessions to resist censorship.
A little earlier, the tenant of Bercy had already sent a warning message to economic players: “The cost of censorship is even higher” than that of the concessions granted to the PS, such as the renegotiation of the reform pensions or the renunciation of the cuts of 4,000 teaching positions, he warned.
-In parallel, negotiations continue: a socialist delegation was received in Bercy on Wednesday eveningwe learned from parliamentary sources.
The negotiations are perilous, because the executive aims a massive effort of 32 billion in savings and 21 billion in revenue to reduce the public deficit to 5.4% of GDP in 2025, compared to an expected level of between 6 and 6.1% for 2024.
Especially since the right, a majority in the Senate and pivotal in the National Assembly, does not intend to let itself steal the limelight, fearing new tax increases ceded to the socialists.
“It is neither the budget of Gabriel Attal, nor that of Michel Barnier, nor that of François Bayrou, this is the Senate budget, a responsible budget”, which marks “the start of a long road towards the recovery of our public finances”, affirmed the leader of the LR group on the finance bill, Christine Lavarde.
New concessions?
But will this senatorial copy pass the filter of the National Assembly? If the CMP is conclusive, the deputies will be presented with the common text in the week of February 3 for a final vote… With, potentially, the use of 49.3, undoubtedly followed by a new motion of censure.
“The CMP will be the justice of the peace. Between now and January 30, there is the possibility of moving the lines,” the president of the PS senators Patrick Kanner told AFP.
But the PS is also put under pressure by its partners: the Insoumis believe that the rose party would “definitively break” with the New Popular Front if he did not vote for censure on the budget.
Particularly targeted by the left:multiple additional budget cuts added in recent days by the Bayrou government. Hundreds of millions of euros less for ecology, housing, development aid or sport…
“We are going to vote for censorship and we are going to make it known very strongly”threatened the boss of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier, “angry” at the “sacrifice of ecology”.
