SVE NEWS & FRANCE24.COM Sharing Series — French government considers forcing through budget bill after tax on rich vote

Left-wing and centrist MPs banded together on Tuesday and voted to make a temporary tax on the rich a permanent levy to help reduce France’s crippling public deficit, dealing a major blow to the minority right-wing government. In response, the government is considering using a controversial measure to adopt its entire 2025 budget without a national assembly vote.

A view of the French National Assembly during a debate session on the 2025 budget on October 22, 2024.
A view of the French National Assembly during a debate session on the 2025 budget on October 22, 2024. © Ludovic Marin, AFP

France‘s minority right wing government suffered a major blow when left wing and centrist deputies united to make a temporary tax on the rich into a permanent levy.

Prime Minister Michel Barnier‘s cabinet will on Wednesday consider using a controversial measure under which a law can be adopted without a national assembly vote to pass its 2025 budget, government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon said.

The government had proposed a special tax on the rich for three years to help reduce a crippling public deficit which it estimates could hit 6.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2024.

Under European Union rules it should be a maximum of three percent.

But in a vote late Tuesday, deputies from a left wing coalition joined with the centrist Modem party, a part of the government coalition, to make the tax permanent.

The government estimates that the tax on households where a single person earns more than 250,000 euros ($270,000) a year, or a couple more than 500,000 euros a year, will bring in two billion euros in 2025. But it had insisted the measure would be “exceptional”.

“Victory!” declared Mathilde Panot, parliamentary leader of the hard left France Unbowed (LFI) party.

“You ask everyone to make an effort (…) and the only ones whom you say ‘don’t worry, it’s exceptional!’ are those who have plenty to live on,” added LFI deputy Eric Coquerel, head of the national assembly finance commission.

Mathieu Lefevre, a lawmaker for President Emmanuel Macron‘s centrist Rebirth party condemned the national assembly vote as a kind of “permanent tax revenge” and called for the government to use its right to pass a law without a vote.

Bregeon said the cabinet would discuss Wednesday using a so-called Article 49.3 adoption of a law, which would avoid a parliament vote, to get the government’s version of the budget passed.

“It is a constitutional possibility,” Bregeon told France 2 television but it was not the prime minister’s “desire”.

Barnier’s government which took office in September after a July election left France with no single party able to govern alone.

With the backing of only 212 members in the 577 seat national assembly, it will rely on the support of the far-right National Rally (FN) to survive.

(AFP) 

Sources from: FRANCE24.COM 

SVE NEWS is the leader in world news liberal sharing.

(Comments on this news are welcome)
2024 CWMALLS: Standard, Sharing,Ecology, Value;
2024 CWMALLS COMMODITY: Patent, Technology, Art, Intelligence;
2024 CWMALLS NEW SPECIES: Keen, Aggressive, Personality, Value;
2024 MWE FUND: Charity, Public Welfare, Responsibility
2024 CWS is with the world and Mars!

Tips: In order to explore more planet species diversity and ecosystem of Mars and earth’s biosphere of cohesion, from now on in the chosen experts and scholars of Mars and planets, especially the astrophysicist, astrobiologists, astrochemists, and so on all over the world’s elite, contribute to the existence and development of simulation of Mars landing. Thank you very much! CWS (Mars) Asia-Pacific Preparatory Committee 0086-57189877088/89877099, E-mail: mars@cws-mars.com, Twitter: CWS, October 3, 2021

    Top