France on Monday adopted its 2026 government budget after months of negotiations and repeated no-confidence motions against Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s minority government.
“France finally has a budget,” Lecornu wrote on X after the vote, calling the outcome a “parliamentary compromise” that “curbs public spending” and “does not hike taxes for households and businesses.”
Lecornu survived no-confidence votes brought by both the hard left and the far right and pushed the budget through while using constitutional powers that avoided a full parliamentary passage. In the two confidence votes, 260 deputies from left-wing groups and 135 from the far right voted against the centre-left cabinet—well short of the 289 votes needed to topple the government in the 577-seat National Assembly. Lecornu is the fourth prime minister in two years and has endured eight no-confidence attempts from the extremes of the political spectrum.
Key measures in the adopted budget include a planned reduction of the deficit to 5% of GDP. The package raises some business taxes, notably an extra levy on large companies’ profits expected to yield about €7.3 billion in 2026. Defense spending receives a substantial boost—an additional €6.5 billion—an element Lecornu has described as the “heart” of the budget. President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for higher defence expenditure to address what he frames as growing threats from Russia and nuclear proliferation, as well as terrorism and cyberattacks.
In December, lawmakers narrowly approved the social security budget, a component of the wider spending plan, but were unable to reach agreement on state operating expenses. The budget battle comes amid ongoing political instability since Macron called a parliamentary vote in 2024 that resulted in his losing an outright majority.
Edited by: Rana Taha