PARIS: Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu warns that France needs to pass a budget ahead of presidential elections next year or risk plunging into political and financial instability.
“I’m going to be direct: we need a budget,” Lecornu said. “Having no budget, given the upcoming electoral deadlines, would lead us into a period of political and financial uncertainty that we wouldn’t know how to manage.”
Lecornu made the comments a day after Fitch Ratings kept a stable outlook for Europe’s second-largest economy, while renewing warnings that widening deficits and mounting debt could trigger a downgrade of France’s credit score, which is six levels above junk.
France’s public finances face intensifying scrutiny amid rising global bond yields and domestic political gridlock.
Budget negotiations will begin at the end of September, when Lecornu will present the government’s proposal.
He faces a deeply divided National Assembly, which has toppled his predecessors over their fiscal plans in the past two years. — Bloomberg
