PM Bayrou cites Trump ‘hurricane’ as he calls on France to fix public finances
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French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou warned France’s growing debt and larger budget deficits compared to European peers made it vulnerable.
PHOTO: REUTERS
PARIS - France urgently needs to reduce its budget deficit to confront a “tsunami of destabilisation” that includes a bellicose Russia and a trade war triggered by US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on April 15.
The upheaval caused by Mr Trump’s tariffs and his decision to turn against traditional allies has shattered trust around the world, Mr Bayrou said in unusually strident comments, warning that France’s growing debt and larger budget deficits, compared with European peers, made it vulnerable.
“The President of the United States has started a hurricane whose consequences will not end any time soon,” he said in a news conference meant to drum up support ahead of talks about the 2026 budget that poses a risk for his minority government.
“As if war weren’t enough, a tsunami of destabilisation came to shake up the planet,” said Mr Bayrou, adding that the world had witnessed “a reversal of alliances that no one could have imagined” as he pointed to Mr Trump’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February.
President Emmanuel Macron, treading a careful path of international diplomacy, has been less outspoken about Mr Trump than his prime minister, who would traditionally be more focused on the domestic audience.
Mr Bayrou’s predecessor Michel Barnier was toppled in December 2024 after he tried to pass a 2025 budget that would have cut spending faster to reduce a budget deficit that rose to 5.8 per cent in 2024.
Speaking on a podium where a sign read “the truth allows us to act”, Mr Bayrou gave little concrete detail on how he intended to cut government spending that he said was too high.
He ruled out increasing France’s overall tax take, among the highest in the world.
He only said he wanted to wrap up consultations with lawmakers and stakeholders on the 2026 budget ahead of the usual September deadline and bring it forward to France’s national holiday on July 14.
The government aims to cut the deficit in 2025 to 5.4 per cent of economic output as a first step towards bringing the shortfall back in line with a European Union ceiling of 3 per cent by 2029.
Mr Bayrou, who relies on a minority government inherited from Mr Macron’s failed gambit to call an early election in June 2024 is especially dependent on the goodwill of Socialist lawmakers.
The Socialist party, which is in the midst of a party leadership contest, has warned it could decide to pull the plug on Mr Bayrou if the wealthiest in society were not part of efforts to reduce the deficit. REUTERS
