The Senate will vote on the 2025 budget this Thursday, a formality, but there is still a long way to go before the text is adopted.

This Thursday, January 23, 2025, senators will vote on the budget before the next stage in the joint committee.

More than three months after it was submitted to Parliament, the draft State budget for 2025 is finally submitted in its entirety to the Senate for a vote on Thursday, a vote without suspense for a government that is still trying to negotiate its survival with the socialists.

Initiated by Michel Barnier in October, rejected by the National Assembly at first reading, suspended after the censure of the former Prime Minister and finally taken up by François Bayrou, this draft finance bill (PLF) has had a chaotic journey through Parliament…

Even if it was on another budget text, the Social Security budget, that the Barnier government was overthrown, there is no guarantee that the opposition will let this PLF pass without batting an eyelid, quite the contrary.

Crucial to the proper functioning of the State, which is currently running at a slow pace under the exceptional regime of a special law voted at the end of the year, this budget represents an almost insoluble equation for the executive, deprived of an absolute majority in the National Assembly but ordered by Brussels to straighten out public finances.

“It is an extremely difficult, very demanding exercise, but it is mandatory. It is essential that France has a budget. A France without a budget is a France at a standstill and that is also increasing its deficit”, hammered home the government spokesperson, Sophie Primas, on Wednesday, judging it “imperative” that the text can be promulgated before the end of February.

Bercy aims for an effort of 32 billion in savings and 21 billion in revenue to reduce the public deficit to 5.4% of GDP in 2025, compared to a level of 6.1% expected for 2024.

“Effort de redressement des comptes”

To achieve its goals, the government can count on a generally benevolent Senate. Dominated by a right-wing-centrist alliance that supports it and also favours a logic of reducing expenditure, the upper house should adopt the draft budget very largely.

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“This budget begins the effort to straighten out the accounts. We are in a situation of extreme urgency and it is time to become aware of it, without sacrificing our convictions or aligning our red lines”, summarises the general budget rapporteur Jean-François Husson (LR), who is leading the budget debates at the Luxembourg Palace.

For the government, the situation is likely to become more complicated later, with the convening on January 30 of a joint committee (CMP), a meeting of seven senators and seven deputies tasked with arriving at a compromise text.

If they succeed, the joint version will have to pass the filter of the National Assembly in the week of February 3 for a final vote, or a possible return of Article 49.3, probably followed by a new motion of censure.

After convincing the socialists not to censure him on his general policy statement, François Bayrou hopes to extend this draft agreement on his budget, with concessions such as the renunciation of the elimination of 4,000 teaching posts and the move to three days of waiting in the civil service, as well as the renegotiation of the pension reform of 2023.

But the account is still not there for the socialists, who will vote against the budget on Thursday like the whole left.

“The budget will not be good, we know that”

“The CMP will be the arbiter. Between now and January 30, there is the possibility of making things move. The budget will not be good, we know that, but we hope that it will be as good as possible”, the president of the PS senators Patrick Kanner, who is calling for further progress, told AFP.

Censorship or non-censorship ? Within the New Popular Front, the Insoumis raised their voices against the socialists on Wednesday: if they repeated their choice not to censor, the PS deputies “would break definitively” with the NFP, according to LFI.

In the meantime, the left has been very scalded by the latest developments in the budget debates in the Senate, with the government's presentation of multiple “planer amendments”: additional budget cuts proposed at the last minute for almost all ministries.

Some 800 million euros on development aid, more than a billion on housing and ecology, 600 million on research and higher education, and a highly symbolic reduction in the sports budget in the post-Olympic year…

Even on the right, these unforeseen decisions have sometimes caused some grumbling. Which foreshadows intense negotiations until the end.