By Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS (Reuters) – France urgently needs to reduce its budget deficit to confront a “tsunami of destabilisation” that includes a bellicose Russia and a trade war triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on Tuesday.
The upheaval caused by Trump’s tariffs and his decision to turn against traditional allies has shattered trust around the world, Bayrou said in unusually strident comments, warning France’s growing debt and larger budget deficits compared to European peers made it vulnerable.
“The president of the United States has started a hurricane whose consequences will not end any time soon,” Bayrou said in a news conference meant to drum up support ahead of talks about the 2026 budget that pose a risk for his minority government.
“As if war weren’t enough, a tsunami of destabilisation came to shake up the planet,” Bayrou said, saying the world had witnessed “a reversal of alliances that no one could have imagined” as he pointed to Trump’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in February
President Emmanuel Macron, treading a careful path of international diplomacy, has been less outspoken about Trump than his prime minister, who would traditionally be more focused on the domestic audience.
Bayrou’s predecessor Michel Barnier was toppled in December after he tried to pass a 2025 budget that would have cut spending faster to reduce a budget deficit that rose to 5.8% in 2024.
Speaking on a podium where a sign read “the truth allows us to act”, Bayrou gave little concrete detail on how he intended to cut government spending he said was too high. He ruled out increasing France’s overall tax take, among the highest in the world.
He only said he wanted to wrap up consultations with lawmakers and stakeholders on the 2026 budget ahead of the usual September deadline and bring it forward to France’s national holiday on July 14.
The government aims to cut the deficit this year to 5.4% of economic output as a first step towards bringing the shortfall back in line with a European Union ceiling of 3% by 2029.
Bayrou, who relies on a minority government inherited from Macron’s failed gambit to call an early election in June last year, is especially dependent on the goodwill of Socialist lawmakers.
The Socialist party, which is in the midst of a party leadership contest, has warned it could decide to pull the plug on Bayrou if the wealthiest in society were not part of efforts to reduce the deficit.
(Additional reportinb by Leigh Thomas and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alison Williams)
