It received only 13 votes.
The French House of Commons has passed the Social Security Finance Bill (PLFSS), a major victory for French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who has been walking a tightrope as he tries to rein in ballooning budget deficits in the face of growing social discontent.
A total of 247 MPs voted in favor of the document, 234 voted against and 93 abstained.
The government has warned parliamentarians that if next year’s social security budget is rejected, public finances could deteriorate rapidly.
Last week, a memo was sent to MPs suggesting the budget deficit could rise to 30 billion euros by 2026, a level that Social Security Secretary Pierre Pribilet deemed “extremely worrying”. The social security deficit in 2025 is estimated at 23 billion euros.
The social security budget also comes with a major political issue: the cancellation of French President Emmanuel Macron’s highly unpopular pension reform.
The suspension, which was removed by the right-wing Senate on first reading and then reintroduced by MPs last Friday, freezes the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64 until January 2028, after the next presidential election.
The document has been adopted by Parliament, but must be submitted to the Senate for a new reading.
Either senators vote in favor of this version and the social security bill is finally adopted, or they reject the draft, which is the most likely scenario, requiring a final reading in parliament to take a final decision before final adoption.
Sébastien Lecornu will now have to deal with the next big hurdle: the adoption of the 2026 state budget, a separate bill that has proven difficult to compromise.
L’Ecornu’s predecessors, Michel Barnier and François Bairou, were ousted after trying to force deep budget cuts.