PARIS, July 15. /TASS/. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Rally parliamentary faction, has threatened to initiate a no-confidence vote in French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou if he doesn’t amend his plan to cut government spending.

"After seven years of catastrophic governance, [President] Emmanuel Macron and Francois Bayrou are unable to achieve real cost saving and are presenting another bill to the French: nearly 20 billion euro in taxes and reduced allowances. <…> If Bayrou doesn’t change his approach, we will initiate a vote of no confidence," she wrote on her X page.

She wished the prime minister’s plan mentioned the reduction of expenditures on receiving migrants or contributions to the EU budget, which is expected to be raised by six billion euro in 2026, to 29.2 billion euro. She also criticized the government for taking no measures to cut down bureaucratic hurdles for hospitals and insufficient measures of support for businesses.

Bayrou earlier presented a plan for reducing public spending to address the problems of budget deficit and the country’s public debt, which has reached 3.3 trillion euro, or some 114% of GDP. Under the plan, the government hopes to save 43.8 billion euro in 2026 to keep the budgetary deficit within 4.6% of GDP. In 2024, this index was 5.8%.

According to Bayrou, he initially planned to cut down expenditures by 40 billion euro but had to raise the threshold to increase defense spending by 3.5 billion euro in 2026. Thus, this budget item will not be trimmed.

The far-right National Rally party has the largest single-party parliamentary faction, accounting for 123 out of 577 seats. However, National Rally’s initiatives are often blocked by the parties of the left-wing New Popular Front coalition, which won the majority of seats in the national legislature after the summer 2024 elections.