French budget crisis continues as General Mandon warns mayors to prepare for war
Assemblée rejects income segment of 2026 budget, General Mandon warns mayors to prepare for war, Sarkozy book to cover agonising 20 days in Prison, and Boualem Sansal is now free
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This week
🏛️Assemblée rejects income segment of 2026 budget
🪖General warns mayors to prepare for war, extremes complain
📖Sarkozy to release book on agonising 20 days in Prison
🕊️Boualem Sansal is now free
🏛️Assemblée rejects income segment of 2026 budget
So, bit of a rough week in general, and nothing worse than the fact that the deputies of the Assemblée Nationale almost unanimously rejected the first part of the PLF.
In a historic vote, the first part of the Project de Loi de Finance (PLF), nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’, was rejected with 404 votes against, 84 abstentions, and 1 vote in favour.
With the president of the finance commission, Eric Coquerel (LFI) saying that the Assemblée had ended up “with a text that cannot please anyone sufficiently, or rather that displeases everyone,” we’re left wondering how much further this political crisis will go.
To resume the issues with the first part of the PLF, some of the additions include:
The creation of a tax on the profits of multinationals, supposed to bring in 26 billion euros alone (LFI)
A tax on the “super dividends” of large groups (LFI)
A reduction in the minimum tax threshold already targeting multinationals (LFI)
Increasing the tax on share buybacks by raising its rate from 8% to 33% (RN)
Extension of surcharge on large companies (REN)
Doubling the tax on digital giants
Creating a €2 tax on small packages from countries like China
Increasing the number of SMEs benefiting from reductions in corporate taxes
Introduce a tax on patrimonial holdings (MoDem)
Reduced the “Dutreil pact” tax-free transfer
Increasing the income tax scale according to the level of inflation
Adding exemptions for overtime earnings from taxation
Reducing VAT on electricity subscriptions from 20% to 5.5%
Abolishing VAT on basic necessities
And while it has been claimed that many of these provisions would bring a total of 40 billion euros into state coffers, and bring the French deficit down to 4.1% from the roughly 5.4% it’s at today, the income segment of the PLF has collapsed at the first hurdle.
Much of this is due to the fact that it has led to complaints on every side.
From the Socle Commun in the centre, as well as for the far-right, there have been arguments that there are too many taxes, while from the Parti Socialiste, there are complaints of not enough taxes and an intransigence of the central bloc, and a claim that they had not won enough victories through the voting of amendments to support the final product.
The central bloc, from their side, complained about the “horrors voted hand in hand by La France Insoumise and the Rassemblement National“ which is why they abstained during the vote.
Les Républicains complained about the constitutionality of many of the amendments, while the RN just complained in general.
And the only deputy to have voted in favour of the package, Harold Huwart (Parti Radical de Gauche - PRG) took the opportunity to harpoon the behaviour of his colleagues:
“We can’t spend a month, all of us, claiming victories in the Hemicycle and then finding ourselves unanimously voting against. It’s irresponsible, and it won’t be understood”
But, what’s coming next in the process?
Now that the Assemblée has rejected the dossier, the text will be sent to the Senate for examination before it is discussed in the joint committee, where seven senators and seven deputies will be tasked with finding an acceptable compromise.
Will this be successful? For the time being, nobody expects this to be successful, with a compromise text needing to somehow convince 404 unhappy deputies to, at minimum, not vote against, but even more improbably, vote in favour.
If this fails, then there is always the possibility of using Article 47 Paragraph 4 of the Constitution, never used to date, to bring “the provisions of the bill may … into force by ordinance.”
But this would cause far more problems than it would solve, and in the opinion of your favourite editor for your favourite publication, send the country careening into fresh legislative elections.
🪖General warns mayors to prepare for war, extremes complain
For reference, you can find the full text of General Fabien Mandon’s speech here:
"If our country falters because it is not ready to accept losing its children" - General Mandon's full speech
The full text of General Fabien Mandon's speech at the Congress of Mayors of France, calling on mayors to help prepare the citizenry for a potential war against foreign enemies.
So, moving on from one political drama to another, this week saw the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Fabien Mandon, giving a speech at the Congress of French Mayors, where he called for French mayors to prepare the French population for the possibility of war, and made one very contentious statement:
“If our country falters because it is not ready to accept losing its children, because we must say things as they are, or to suffer economically because priorities will go to defence production, for example, if we are not ready for that, then we are at risk”
Mandon hammered home the fact that France has been living in a period of peace that has been unheard of today, and was clear that his speech was a reminder of the need to fight for prosperity and for France.
He told the Mayors that they needed to prepare citizens for the potential need to “accept suffering ourselves to protect who we are”, while reminding the audience that France has “all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to deter the Moscow regime from trying its luck further,” making it clear that France wasn’t at a disadvantage.
However, as scary as this can be, this only goes some of the way to explaining why the far-right and far-left extremes pushed back aggressively on this speech.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from the far-left La France Insoumise, pushed back on Mandon’s statement claiming that he had no democratic mandate for this:
“I wish to express my complete disagreement with the statement made by the Chief of the Defence Staff. It is not his place to invite mayors or anyone else to participate in war preparations decided by no one: not the President, not the government, not Parliament. Nor is it his place to anticipate sacrifices that would result from our diplomatic failures, on which his public opinion has not been sought! Where is President Macron? Why is he allowing this?”
Communist leader Fabien Roussel likewise joined in, calling it a “dangerous intervention” and “unbearable warmongering.” The far-right lawmaker, Sébastien Chenu, took the same position as Mélenchon on LCI, saying he had “no legitimacy”, and naturally, took aim at Emmanuel Macron and his “thinking”.
Naturally, these were all the parties that have consistently voted against resolutions in favour of sending military aid or simply supporting Ukraine, and have consistently attacked Emmanuel Macron and the EU’s positions on the topic.
As a reminder, the RN has received several loans from major government-aligned Russian banks, and Putin would have featured on Le Pen’s presidential posters in the last elections, if the war hadn’t occured.
Now, if you have been paying attention to the world around us, we’re not living in the most peaceful of times, and we’re living in a world where a revanchist, imperialist state like Russia is aggressively threatening Europe for its role in supporting Ukraine against the genocidal Russian invasion.
This has led many member state governments, including France and Belgium, to prepare documents outlining what their citizens need to do to survive for a period like 72 hours.
We’ve also had almost every country in Europe come to the realisation that we have been slacking off in ensuring our own defence and that we have been too reliant on the American security umbrella.
However, we continue to see an attitude that believes that if everybody suddenly stopped supporting Ukraine, and fed Ukrainians to the wolves, that everybody would be safe and nobody would have to suffer anymore.
Which, seeing the recent history of Russian imperialist aggression and the repeated threats made towards Europe, is incredibly ignorant.
Which is why Mandon made the speech, and is encouraging Mayors to take a role in ensuring that our citizens are not ignorant of what is happening, and what may come if the worst happens.
📖Sarkozy to release book on agonising 20 days in Prison
So, as you guys will remember from last week’s dispatch, former President Nicolas Sarkozy was temporarily released from the Santé Prison after 20 days of incarceration, pending his appeal process.
What many of you will not know is that Sarkozy, who is clearly the Nelson Mandella of our age, has announced that he will publish a book on his time in Prison, “The Journal of a Prisoner”, which will be released on Wednesday 10 December 2025.
And we’ve already had one exerpt published from this groundbreaking piece of literature:
“In prison, there is nothing to see and nothing to do. I forget the silence that does not exist at La Santé, where there is much to hear. Unfortunately, the noise is constant. Like in the desert, inner life grows stronger in prison.”
Jesus. Wept.
As a reminder, the 70-year-old former president was sentenced to five years of prison time for Criminal association, corruption, and criminal conspiracy in the Libyan financing case, where Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi funded Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful 2007 presidential election campaign to the tune of around €50 million.
I’m sure Sarkozy’s fans will be very happy to give him more money.
🕊️Boualem Sansal is now free
To finish up the week with good news: having received a presidential pardon on 12 November, the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal has now returned to France after having been sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining national unity”, undermining Algeria’s territorial integrity and economy, insulting authorities and possessing documents that endangered national interests.
All because he was critical of the Algerian regime, which you can read about in these dispatches from March 23 and April 13.
After a year of incarceration and a diplomatic struggle that had inflamed existing tensions between France and Algeria, not helped by domestic political posturing or the crisis related to the Western Sahara, Germany was asked to step in as a trusted third party and mediate.
Fortunately, a combination of this mediation and the departure of former Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau (LR), who was known for his bombastic rhetoric against immigration and the Algerian state, allowed there to be a breakthrough in these discussions, and the writer was released.
Now, whether or not there will be any thawing of relations between France and Algeria will need to be seen.
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