When left-wing and centrist lawmakers banded together to turn a temporary tax on the wealthy into a permanent levy, it dealt a serious blow to France’s minority right-wing government.
According to government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon, the cabinet of Prime Minister Michel Barnier will discuss on Wednesday whether to approve its 2025 budget through the use of a contentious provision that permits legislation to be passed without a national assembly vote.
To combat a debilitating public deficit that it projects might reach 6.1% of GDP in 2024, the administration has suggested a three-year special tax on the wealthy.
According to EU regulations, it should not exceed three percent.

To make the tax permanent, however, legislators from a left-wing alliance voted late Tuesday with the ruling coalition’s moderate Modem party.

The tax on families with a single individual earning more than 250,000 euros ($270,000) or a couple earning more than 500,000 euros annually is expected to generate two billion euros in 2025, according to official forecasts. However, it had maintained that the action would be “exceptional.”

“We won!” said Mathilde Panot, the head of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party in parliament.

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

A deputy for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Rebirth party, Mathieu Lefevre, called on the government to exercise its authority to enact legislation without a vote and denounced the national assembly vote as a kind of “permanent tax revenge.”

According to Bregeon, the cabinet will talk about passing the government’s budget on Wednesday by adopting a bill under Article 49.3, which would circumvent a vote in parliament.

Bregeon stated to France 2 television that while it was a constitutional option, the prime minister’s “Want.”

Following an election in July, Barnier’s administration came into power in September, leaving France without a single party capable of ruling on its own.

It will need the cooperation of the far-right National Rally (FN) to survive, as it only has 212 members in the 577-seat National Assembly.