France’s government has cleared the first major hurdle in its battle to pass the 2026 budget, surviving a no-confidence vote in parliament on Friday after using constitutional powers to bypass a
final vote by lawmakers.
The motion, tabled by the hard-left France Unbowed party alongside the Greens and Communists, attracted 269 votes — short of the 288 needed to bring down Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government.
The vote was triggered after the government invoked Article 49.3 of the constitution to force through the revenue portion of the budget without approval from the National Assembly, a controversial move that allows legislation to pass unless the government is toppled.
A second no-confidence vote is expected shortly. Should that motion also fail, Lecornu plans to again rely on Article 49.3 to push through the spending side of the budget — a step almost guaranteed to spark further confidence challenges.
President Emmanuel Macron’s minority government has increasingly leaned on constitutional shortcuts after months of negotiations failed to produce a budget capable of securing majority support in a deeply divided parliament. No single political bloc currently holds enough seats to govern outright.
The prolonged budget standoff has already claimed two governments and plunged French politics into levels of instability not seen since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958. France has been operating under a temporary rollover budget from last year to keep public finances running.
In recent weeks, Lecornu offered last-minute concessions to the Socialist Party, securing their agreement not to support no-confidence motions if the government resorted to emergency constitutional measures.
Despite this, tensions remain high. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen warned lawmakers who shielded the government from collapse that voters would hold them accountable in upcoming elections, including local polls in March and the 2027 presidential race.
“The French people are watching you,” Le Pen told parliament ahead of the vote. “They will make you pay at the ballot box — not just for the budget cuts, but for the humiliating way this process is being imposed.”
The government has defended its approach by pointing to the need to rein in public finances. Lecornu said the deficit would be capped at 5% of gross domestic product in 2026, down from an estimated 5.4% in 2025 — though still well above the European Union’s 3% limit.
A second no-confidence motion, submitted by Le Pen’s National Rally party, is widely expected to fail, as left-wing lawmakers have historically refused to back far-right initiatives.
Government officials say they expect the full 2026 budget to be definitively adopted by early February, bringing an end — at least temporarily — to one of the most turbulent fiscal battles of Macron’s presidency. Photo by Jarosław Baranowski, Wikimedia commons.