French parliament passes special law to ensure state funding pending 2026 budget

PARIS, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Lawmakers in France's National Assembly and Senate on Tuesday adopted a "special law" proposed by the government to extend the 2025 budget into next year, before resuming work on a final 2026 budget in January.

The move followed the failure of a joint committee of lawmakers from the National Assembly and the Senate on Dec. 19 to reach a compromise on the country's 2026 state budget, raising the prospect that France would enter the new year without a fully adopted budget.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu had earlier said that the government would not resort to Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows legislation to be adopted without a parliamentary vote and has been used in previous years to push budgets through a divided parliament.

Lecornu, speaking on Tuesday evening at Matignon, the French prime minister's office, stressed that France must have a state budget in place in January, while reiterating the government's objective of reducing the public deficit to below 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2026.

France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, is under pressure to rein in its deficit and soaring debt, but efforts have been hampered by a political deadlock.