French finance commission strips deficit target and adds new levies to the 2027 budget

France's National Assembly Finance Commission completed a three-day examination of the 2027 state budget bill on 9 October, according to proceedings published by the Assemblée nationale. The panel adopted 118 amendments and rejected 421 of 811 examined, on a text that had attracted 1,830 deposited amendments on its revenue section alone. The most consequential decision came on the first day: the commission voted to delete Article 1bis, the preamble provision that formally committed parliament to a public deficit of 5.0 per cent of GDP for 2027. The deletion does not alter the government's draft measures, but it strips the parliamentary anchor for Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's fiscal consolidation strategy before the bill has reached the floor.

Government's fiscal case and the EU constraint

Lecornu presented the 2027 budget bill to the Council of Ministers on 1 October, proposing a total adjustment of €54 billion to bring the deficit from an estimated 5.4 per cent of GDP in 2026 to 5.0 per cent in 2027. Without corrective action, the Prime Minister stated, the deficit would approach 6.5 per cent of GDP. Public debt is approaching 120 per cent of GDP, and additional debt-service costs of roughly €10 billion are built into the 2027 projections, Euronews reported on 1 October.

The 5.0 per cent target is significant beyond domestic politics. France has been subject to an EU excessive-deficit procedure since 2024, under which the Council of the EU has set a medium-term adjustment path binding Paris. A budget that lacks a formal parliamentary commitment to the 5.0 per cent trajectory weakens the government's position in its annual fiscal dialogue with the European Commission, which assesses national budget plans in autumn under Regulation (EU) 2024/1263 of the reformed Stability and Growth Pact.

The October 8 package: new levies the government opposed

The commission's most substantive revisions came on 8 October. Deputies adopted a 2 per cent annual levy on securities held through family portfolio-holding companies, a measure aimed at reducing tax optimisation by high-net-worth households. The panel also voted to lower the threshold at which France applies its qualified domestic minimum top-up tax on multinationals from €750 million to €100 million in consolidated group revenue, a change that would extend the minimum 15 per cent effective rate to a significantly wider set of corporate groups. A three-year temporary contribution on oil and gas company superprofits was also carried. These measures were adopted against the stated preference of the rapporteur général, according to the commission proceedings.

The commission additionally approved an amendment making the research tax credit conditional on recipients maintaining their French research and development operations for at least ten years, a provision designed to prevent companies from claiming the credit and subsequently delocalising activity. In the digital-assets domain, the panel adopted a measure taxing capital gains on conversions between crypto-assets and stablecoins, closing a gap that had previously allowed tax-free switching between volatile tokens and tokenised dollars under MiCA-regulated instruments effective from 1 January 2027. All ten versions of a proposed wealth-floor levy, modelled on proposals associated with economist Gabriel Zucman, were rejected.

Parliamentary arithmetic and the calendar ahead

The composition of the committee's vote reflects the government's fragile position. The Ensemble pour la République group had 24 amendments adopted, Socialists 18, and the Republican Right and the Liot group 16 each. The National Rally, which holds the largest single bloc in the chamber, had only 3 of its 74 examined amendments adopted, according to the Assemblée nationale's proceedings. No single grouping commands a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.

The text now moves to full plenary on 13 October, where the commission's amendments to the revenue section must be confirmed or reversed. Deputies are scheduled to vote on the first part on 20 October, on the Social Security financing bill on 27 October, and on the budget as a whole on 17 November. If the National Assembly and the Senate cannot agree, a joint parliamentary committee is convened. The government retains the option of invoking Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass the bill without a vote, as it did with the 2026 budget, but that procedure exposes it to a motion of censure in a chamber where the arithmetic is tight and the presidential campaign opens within months.

Sources

• Assemblée nationale — Projet de loi de finances pour 2027, dossier législatif
• Assemblée nationale — Commission des finances, compte rendu de la séance d'examen de la première partie du PLF 2027
• Euronews — Le gouvernement français présente son budget sur fond de dette record (1 Oct 2026)
• Assemblée nationale — Examen de la première partie du PLF 2027 en commission des finances
• EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2024/1263 on the coordination of economic policies (reformed SGP)
• France 24 — French PM presents belt-tightening 2027 budget (1 Oct 2026)