Economics
France’s 2026 budget to be ‘demanding’ undertaking: economy minister
Ironing out the 2026 budget of the euro zone’s second-largest economy will prove a “demanding” task, French Economy Minister Eric Lombard told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed, after lawmakers earlier this month finally adopted 2025’s financial plan after a spate of tumultuous, government-toppling attempts.
France has charted a trajectory to reduce its public deficit, aiming to reach 5.4% of the national GDP in 2025 and to dip below 3% in 2029, Lombard said. Under European Union spending rules, member states must keep their deficits below 3% of GDP.
“2026, yes, it is a very demanding budget, because we will continue to diminish the deficit and to be below, of course, below 5.4%, and probably below 5%,” the economy minister told CNBC on Monday, noting that the final target hadn’t been set in stone.
“We are going to work with all the political parties … to discuss, to talk with us. We are going, also, to work with the unions, with the employers, in order to reach a consensus on the main policies that are key for the country, and policies on which we can make adjustments that will allow us to spend less in 2026,” he said.
The absence of a budget and broader instability in French politics has bled into markets over recent months. Lombard conceded a “negative impact on growth,” expressing hope that investors will now return to France.
The country’s economic performance shriveled with a 0.1% contraction in the fourth quarter, from from 0.4% growth in the preceding three months, with the Bank of France expecting a meager 0.1-0.2% rise in the national GDP in the first quarter amid anticipated increases in market services and the energy sector, according to its latest monthly business survey. The International Monetary Fund anticipates the French economy will expand by 0.8% across the full-year 2025 period.
Pension reform
Now the budget has been finalized, focus has returned to the fate of discussions over French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial — and highly contested — 2023 pension reform, which seeks to gradually lift the retirement age from 62 to 64 in a bid to keep the system solvent.
France’s new Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has signaled that the legislation could return to the agenda — providing something of a litmus test for those watching France’s efforts to rein in its deficits.
“I totally trust the representatives of the workers and of the employers,” Lombard told CNBC’s Reed. “And so they know that their responsibility is to find adjustment … And they have three months to do that, I am confident they can reach an agreement on that, and if they reach an agreement, of course, it will be put in front of the parliament, hopefully to be in the law as soon as this year.”
Fitch Ratings earlier this month struck a negative tone over a potential repeal of the legislation.
“Any rolling back of the reform could undo some of the planned fiscal consolidation over the medium term and would be moderately negative for the medium-term fiscal outlook, in our view. France’s pension-related expenditures are among the highest in the EU,” FitchRatings warned in a Feb. 10 note.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey attends the central bank’s Monetary Policy Report press conference at the Bank of England, in the City of London, on May 8, 2025.
Carlos Jasso | Afp | Getty Images
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was heading for more economic uncertainty, despite the country being the first to strike a trade agreement with the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff regime.
“The tariff and trade situation has injected more uncertainty into the situation… There’s more uncertainty now than there was in the past,” Bailey told CNBC in an interview.
“A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement is very welcome in that sense, very welcome. But the U.K. is a very open economy,” he continued.
That means that the impact from tariffs on the U.K. economy comes not just from its own trade relationship with Washington, but also from those of the U.S. and the rest of the world, he said.
“I hope that what we’re seeing on the U.K.-U.S. trade side will be the first of many, and it will be repeated by a whole series of trade agreements, but we have to see that happen of course, and where it actually ends up.”
“Because, of course, we are looking at tariff levels that are probably higher than they were beforehand.”
In Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report released Thursday, the word “uncertainty” was used 41 times across its 97 pages, up from 36 times in February, according to a CNBC tally.
The U.K. central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday, taking its key rate to 4.25%. The decision was highly divided among the seven members of its Monetary Policy Committee, with five voting for the 25 basis point cut, two voting to hold rates and two voting to reduce by a larger 50 basis points.
Bailey said that while some analysts had perceived the rate decision as more hawkish than expected — in other words, leaning toward holding rates elevated than slashing them rapidly — he was not surprised by the close vote.
“What it reflects is that there are two sides, there are risks on both sides here,” he told CNBC.
“We could get a much more severe weakness of demand than we were expecting, that could then pass through to a weaker outlook for inflation than we were expecting.”
“There’s a risk on the other side that we could get some combination of more persistence in the inflation effects that are gradually working their way through the system,” such as in wages and energy, while “supply capacity in the economy is weaker,” he said.
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