Budget negotiations have consumed the French political class for nearly two years, after President Emmanuel Macron's 2024 snap election delivered a hung parliament just as a massive hole in public finances made belt-tightening more urgent. The budget talks have cost two prime ministers their jobs, unsettled debt markets and alarmed France's European partners. However, Lecornu whose chaotic two-stage nomination in October drew derision around the world managed to secure the support of Socialist lawmakers through costly but targeted concessions.
The splintered National Assembly will vote on the Social Security budget on Tuesday, December 9th. There is a slender chance that the budget can pass with a hotch-potch majority assembled from the quarrelsome Centre, the divided Centre-Right and the wary Socialists. If so, Lecornu's experiment in parliamentary democracy allowing the National Assembly to control the most important French budget-making for decades will have achieved its first important success.