Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, at the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, on December 9, 2025. JULIEN MUGUET FOR LE MONDE
"Special law" or Article 49.3? Less than 48 hours before Parliament hit the deadline to decide on a 2026 state budget bill, the answer is still uncertain. Officially, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu refuses to use Article 49.3, a constitutional measure that allows the government to pass a bill without a vote. With no parliamentary agreement on the 2026 budget bill, he is preparing to have Parliament adopt a special law to prevent the state's complete financial shutdown on Tuesday, December 23.
A cabinet meeting has been scheduled for Monday evening, after President Emmanuel Macron returns from Abu Dhabi, where he was making his traditional end-of-year visit to French troops deployed abroad. Debate would then begin at the Assemblée Nationale before a vote is held, followed by the bill going to the Sénat on Tuesday, according to a source at the prime minister's office.
The special law was a method that had already been used in December 2024, after former prime minister Michel Barnier's government fell. It had been unanimously adopted by the political parties in the name of stability. The stopgap measure gave the next government, led by François Bayrou, a few weeks to open talks with the Socialist Party (PS), whose members agreed to abstain from the vote on the 2025 budget bill in exchange for a "conclave" on pension reform, thereby allowing the budget to be adopted.
