2026 Budget: Prime Minister François Bayrou considers a referendum and will "demand efforts from everyone"

"What I'm aiming for is the support of the French people." While François Bayrou's government is seeking 40 billion in savings in the 2026 budget , which it intends to achieve mainly through spending cuts, the Prime Minister announced to the JDD that a project could be submitted to a referendum.

This principle, never used during the Fifth Republic, is being studied, along with other possibilities. However, like every referendum, it should be decided by the President of the Republic.

"I think the issue is serious enough, with enough serious consequences for the future of the nation, for it to be addressed directly to citizens. I am therefore not ruling out any possibility. It would be unprecedented. It is a comprehensive plan that I want to submit; it will require efforts from everyone, and given the scale it must be, it cannot succeed if the French people do not support it," the head of government indicated.

François Bayrou thus deplores an "artichoke method" used to manufacture previous budgets: "we remove a leaf here, we add another there... Everyone pleads, sometimes blackmails for their sector of activity. We never see the overall picture. We don't move forward."

In this interview, the government's target remains the same: a deficit reduction target below 3%, whereas it slipped to around 7% under Emmanuel Macron.

The method, however, remains unclear. Should the tax deduction for retirees be eliminated? Should the contribution of the wealthiest households and the highest-profit companies be made permanent? Should state agencies be eliminated? Numerous avenues have been put forward by members of the government over the past few weeks, without any firm positions being taken.

Emmanuel Macron's two five-year terms have been marked by various attempts at referendums, none of which have been submitted to the French people so far. The head of state indicated in his New Year's address on December 31 that he wanted to ask citizens to "decide" on certain "decisive issues" in 2025, although these have not yet been specified.