France: “Window” of compromise on budget – Intense Interparty Processes

Talks between a group of left-wing parties and its government about him progress, according to the head of the Socialists, Olivier Forre, providing a possible way out for an agreement to present Prime Minister François Bairu’s political priorities next week. “It goes on,” said Fore today (9.01.2025), after the meetings he had yesterday at the French Ministry of Finance along with the Communist and Green parties. “We seek paths towards a compromise, even if it is difficult to find”. The Bairu government talks with parties as well as trade unions and business groups in an attempt to compose an urgent budget for 2025, after the previous government was overturned with a vote of mistrust in December. CORVERSE The support of the Socialists could offer Bairu the numbers he needs to avoid the same fate, which resulted in Marin Lepin’s far-right National Alert party supporting the motion of impeachment submitted by the New People’s Front alliance. Forre told TF1 that he would be ready to find a compromise with the government despite opposition from the leader of Unruly France Jean Lick Melanson. “Sometime there must be a budget and that is what we are looking for,” said Fore. “But we seek to do it in the best terms for the French people”. Melanson, in his post in X, accused the Socialists and the Greens of negotiating behind the back of the New People’s Front, which includes “Unsubordinate France”, the Socialists, Greens and Communists, and said the talks show “full disrespect for our alliance”. President Emanuel Macron has previously promoted the idea of an alliance with the Socialists and some other leftist groups, without success. However, Forre said there was a change in the government’s attitude regarding a 2023 law that increases the retirement threshold to 64 years, without a direct refusal to consider possible changes. “I understood a simple thing, namely that there is no veto, which is already a change,” Fore said.