Paris: French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has called for closed-door talks with lawmakers in a bid to pass a budget, after an acrimonious parliamentary debate on taxing the rich ended with a new levy on “unproductive wealth”.
Government ministers will invite representatives of political groups to try to agree on “broad principles on a landing ground” for the main budget bill and the social security chapter, he said.
In a sign of the challenge ahead, the Socialist leader in the National Assembly said last Saturday his party wouldn’t approve the budget in its current state.
“I think we need to change our approach, since clearly doing it here, in complete transparency and in front of the media, ultimately doesn’t allow for an open-hearted discussion,” Lecornu said late last Friday at the National Assembly.
The prime minister’s call for talks came moments after the National Assembly rejected the left’s proposals for variations of the tax named after economist Gabriel Zucman.
The government opposed the measures, but Lecornu needs to appease Socialists who have said they would use their pivotal role to force him out in a no-confidence motion if there is no significant increase in taxation of the wealthy in the budget bill.
The new version of Macron’s wealth levy, which passed late last Friday, targets some financial savings, non-residential real estate and goods like yachts, luxury cars and art.
The amendment was backed by socialists, centrists and far-right lawmakers.
Boris Vallaud, the Socialist leader in the National Assembly, pressed for further changes and threatened to withhold his party’s support.
“If the budget were to be put to us today, we would obviously vote against it, knowing full well what that would mean, namely the fall of the government,” Vallaud said in a La Tribune interview.
As written, the bill still has “too many unfair savings made at the expense of the hard-working French people with modest incomes,” he said.
Budget Minister Amelie de Montchalin earlier called the wealth levy a “hybrid form of taxation”, stressing the text would still be debated in the Senate and back at the Assembly. Socialist leader Olivier Faure called it a “new ISF”, referring to the wealth tax Macron transformed to refocus on real estate when he was first elected president. — Bloomberg
