Welcome to this Centre for European Reform podcast. I'm Charles Grant, the CR's director. We're going to discuss France today and what's happening in Paris. I'm delighted to be joined by Sophie Peder, the longstanding economist correspondent in Paris, also the author of a very good biography of Emmanuel Macron. Welcome to the show, Sophie. Thanks, Charles. It's a pleasure to join you. Well, let's just set the scene a little bit. Macron's sort of immediate problems really started with the European elections last year. He did rather badly in those elections, so he decided to clear the air by dissolving Parliament. It was a clever move, but it totally backfired.

The Far Right did very well in the result, and Macron lost his majority in the National Assembly.

Since then, he's had a number of unstable governments and different prime ministers,

and he hasn't done very well recently.

The current government of Mr. LeCorn, who is just hanging on.

But tell us, do you think

the current government will survive and what factors may affect its survival or not? Well, it's worth

remembering that in 2024, so last year when he did dissolve, as you said, the National Assembly

and hold these snap elections. So he already had a minority, actually, but he had a minority

that was at least sort of workable, more or less, functioning. And the elections resulted in him losing that. And you've got this deadlocked parliament, which is why we've got all this blockage, there's sort of three blocks, more or less centrist block, and then the two extremes. And that is why, you know, there have been so many governments that have come and gone over the last 12 months.

And in answer to your question, it's all going to depend on what happens to the budget.

I mean, what's sort of depressing about watching France at the moment is that it's only about the budget.

You know, there's no more ambition at the moment for this government.

It's really just about trying to pass a budget.

And every single day in Parliament, you have a sitting, and you have debates over amendments, and most

amendments involve just creating new taxes, introducing new ways of raising revenue, very, very

little discussion of how to cut spending. France is under a lot of pressure for its public debt.

And so Le Corneno, the Prime Minister,

his survival depends entirely on whether or not he can get this through. It's going to be a

compromise, but it depends on whether he can win just enough of the opposition votes to

avoid being voted down by Parliament, which will try to do that at some point this side of Christmas. So I don't

think he'll fall before Christmas, but there's a real chance that around then, around that time,

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