Will France call another election by 2026?
MetaculusAUG 2024
French Senate Passes 2025 Budget
Above: France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou delivers a speech at the Senate, French upper house parliament, in Paris on Jan. 15, 2025. Image copyright: Bertrand Guay/Contributor/AFP via Getty Images
The Spin
Narrative A
The 2025 budget reflects Bayrou's approach of balancing fiscal responsibility with social welfare, as he seeks to reduce the deficit while protecting essential services. Unlike his predecessor, the prime minister has taken a pragmatic route to finally deliver the long-delayed budget.
Narrative B
With taxes set to go up and spending cuts still insufficient, the 2025 budget definitively marks the end of Macron's pro-growth reform era — and the president is ultimately to blame for that. After all, it was him who called the snap election that threw the country into a political deadlock.