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)