France's government postpones budget talks to Tuesday

By Reuters   |   2 weeks ago
France's government postpones budget talks to Tuesday

PARIS, Jan 16 (Reuters) - France's government has postponed its 2026 budget talks in parliament, scheduled for Friday, to Tuesday next week, as lawmakers have failed to reach a compromise, the minister in charge of relations with parliament, Laurent Panifous, said late on Thursday.

"Despite the government's desire to create the conditions for a vote, this budget cannot be adopted by a vote," Panifous said in the lower house.

"We are definitively moving away from a compromise text that is acceptable to a majority of members."

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu will on Friday make proposals to enable the enactment of a compromise budget, Panifous said.

One of several options regarding the 2026 budget would be for Lecornu to invoke Article 49.3 of the Constitution to push through the finance bill without a vote, after negotiating a text with all groups except the RN and LFI, according to a government source.

However, that would almost certainly lead to more motions of no-confidence.

(Reporting by Louise Rasmussen, editing by Dominique Vidalon and Stephen Coates)

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