After Months of Uncertainty: France Finally Has a 2025 Budget as Government Survives No-Confidence Vote
After four months of uncertainty, the Senate has finally voted on France's 2025 budget. This allowed it to finally approve the country's main financial law, a day after the National Assembly rejected a vote of no confidence in the government submitted by La France Insoumise. But the hardest part is yet to come, Le Monde writes.
The French government has avoided the first of two no-confidence votes put forward by far-left political forces by adopting the budget under a special procedure bypassing parliament.
‘MPs have shown that dialogue and compromise work. This is good for our country and for our countrymen and is proof that their political representatives are able to overcome differences when the stability of the country is at stake,’ commented Economy Minister Eric Lombard.
The new finance law should keep the public deficit at 5.4% of GDP in 2025, a slightly less ambitious target than the 5% planned by the short-lived Barnier government, which failed to pass its budget in December 2024.
The budget still needs to be reviewed by the Constitutional Council before it can enter into force.
Among other things, the new budget reduces the VAT threshold for individual entrepreneurs, significantly increases the tax on airline tickets, introduces ‘anti-tax optimisation’ for the highest income earners so that these taxpayers pay a minimum tax of 20%, and increases the financial transaction tax affecting the purchase of shares in large French listed companies.
Other key measures contained in the budget are available here.