France’s prime minister, François Bayrou, has proposed scrapping two public holidays as part of radical measures aimed at reducing the country’s ballooning deficit, boosting its economy and preventing it being “crushed” by debt.
Outlining the 2026 budget on Tuesday, Bayrou suggested Easter Monday and 8 May, when France commemorates Victory Day, marking the end of the second world war, although he said he was open to other options.
The centrist prime minister said: “The entire nation has to work more so that the activity of the country as a whole increases, and so that France’s situation improves. Everyone will have to contribute to the effort.”
France is under pressure to bring its public deficit, running at 5.8% of GDP, under the 3% figure required by EU rules, and to rein in €3.3tn of public debt – on which the annual interest, of €60bn, could soon become its biggest budget outlay.
I don’t know about you guys but when we have a public holiday im normally out doing something. Spending money. So won’t this just cancel out?
Essentially, cancelling public holidays will in short term add some slave labourto the company, which in turn maybe add more profits, more b2b economical activity, and if France has any decent corporate tax and not too many loopholes, some money will go into budget to be allocated to usual overspending that got you into this place, and none to repay debts.
Tldr: you’re being screwed over, go protest, or ask for raises when this actually occurs.
let the heads roll
American here… this plan implies that corporations are well taxed right. Cause if people work on a holiday, thier pay doesn’t change I assume. That means only the increased output that leads to corporate income generates leading to improved tax revenue counts.
If the corporate tax rate is low like in the US, this would be like trying to fill the bathtub through a straw while the drain is open.No no no, you can’t tax corporations silly. That would punish them for creating jobs and wealth, they will leave the country and take back their jobs and then where would we be? Better continually lower corp taxes and Unleash the Magic™️ that will somehow cause budgets to balance themselves and jobs to spring up in abundance.
Is that how france does it too? I know that is the concept here in the states.
Almost everywhere these days sadly. If there are exceptions, I’m not aware of them. Tax codes are globally under fire because companies see them as an impediment to profitability, and not the foundation for how society functions and thus allows business to function.
Well, in the US the board of a public company has a legal fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. And shareholders look for short term gains. So basically, if the company tried to do what was right for the long term, the board would get sued, and lose. After the united healthcare CEO got shot and killed, United started denying less claims. It was surely a short-term measure designed to help the company long term. A major investment company that owned a lot of shares is suing them for that specific decision. This kind of thing has lead to companies being controlled by people who favor short term wins, like lower taxes now, worry about everything else later.
He’s not a fucking centrist…
Yeah, let’s not touch one cent of the 221 billion € each year given to large corporations, and instead stop celebrating the victory against Nazism.
the annual interest, of €60bn, could soon become its biggest budget outlay.
public financial support for the corporate sector currently coats €100bn
Not only not a centrist, he can’t even do math.
Biggest public spending by far: gifts to private companies, going completely uncheck for decades, no one know what any of the 2000+ schemes are and why this money is given and for what and nothing is expected in return. But if we are missing 17 billions on healthcare budget, we are supposed to get screwed and shut up.
We did that in Denmark this year, cutting a holiday.
It turns out the whole thing was a calculator mistake, and also, the same faulty calculator was wrong about needing it in the first place.
Read the article looking for his reasoning. Nada. Apparently he got a calculator out and thought, “We could be 0.54% more productive!”
For only two days, there is almost no productivity lost. People simply work a little harder to make up that time. There’s also less work because no one else was working, but still, c’mon.
Or, just tax the rich.
Right? Why is it always “make life harder for the working class” and never “make billionaires pay their fucking share”???
France has “only” 40 billionaires and also has the second-highest marginal tax rate in the EU at 55.4%. I know billionaires are the favourite whipping boy of the left and of Lemmy, and I support taxing them in general, but it won’t fix this problem.
Great, 40 billionaires means at least €40 billion can be reappropriated to the public right away. What a great start you’ve identified.
Since one of those is Bernard Arnault, we can get an extra 100 billion head start.
hahahahahaha!
That comment is going to be wildly unpopular.
For starters, ONE billionaire is too many. A billion is a ridiculous amount of money. Saying France has “only” 40 is so incredibly disconnected.
Nobody should be able to amass this level of wealth. And those who do, do it through sheer human exploitation and lack of ethics.
The fact that they get to have such incredible wealth while the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet, and governments need to cut social services due to lack of funding is criminal.
All the money is pooling into these peoples’ hands and you’re not asking yourself why? You don’t think that taxing that amount of wealth even a little might help anything?
I’d really like to hear why.
There’s a difference between having high marginal taxes on the rich, and actually collecting them
Do you want France to have tax agents as effective as the IRS?
I’m French. I want them 100 times more effective. You have no idea how much the rich French love tax optimization (and fraud – it’s been estimated to 100+ bn/year a few years ago).
The average fortune growth of the top 500 French families for the last 20 years is 14% a year. They can spare a dime.
Not to mention that I keep hearing stories about the IRS getting budget cuts. You guys just have a seemingly-mistaken impression that the IRS knows it all because they have citizens run the numbers while also doing the math themselves due to corporate lobbying from turbotax and the like, but it’s actually a good thing when your tax office has good information. Y’all should concern yourselves with how politicians make them use it.
But they should reduce pensions because it only benefits older people who could be used for more research, defense and infrastructure.
If income increases, but you don’t manage it well, the problem won’t be solved.
Yeah, so imagine. Wild idea here, we tax the rich. To increase the income of the government. Who can invest in the working and middle class, who can then have disposable income to stimulate the economy. Just a crazy theory I have there that has been shown to work every time it’s been implemented. Crazy right? It’s been 50 fucking years, it doesn’t trickle down Reagan.
why not just lift the age limit of pensions to 90, right?
the second-highest marginal tax rate in the EU at 55.4%.
Tax on what, labor income?
Because that is not what the rich live off. On the contrary it makes building wealth harder for the working class.Also how do you arrive at 55.4%?
All I could find was a marginal income tax rate of up to 45% + an additional 3-4% for incomes over 250k.
https://fr.icalculator.com/income-tax-rates/2025.html
Are you adding social security as well?
France already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the OECD. Their main problem is the opposite: the tax system is too narrow. Generally, European welfare states function by levying high taxes on everyone. Problem with France is that they try to have a welfare state without taxing the middle class enough. For example, it levies 5% lower VAT than the Nordics, and grants lots more exemptions.
OR, and hear me out on this one, you could TAX THE RICH.
Does this cheese eating surrender monkey want the French to riot? because this is how you get the French to riot.
Yes because all the recent evidence definitely doesn’t suggest that productivity is increased with 4 day working weeks overall
Why? Because free time is good for people’s mental and physical health. You know who’s more productive than someone who doesn’t have time or energy to improve their health? Someone who does!
Truly baffling stuff
Yeah, that’ll go down well with the populace I’ll bet. Cue rioting and fires.
Knowing what I know of French history, I would never be a politician in France.
I know someone from France with 36 vacation days 😅 36 !!!
That’s is just 10 days (two weeks) more than the mandatory minimum for new eyployees, it’s above average, but it’s what you get in most EU countries with some 10~20 years of work & a few kids.
(The orange part is just the starting minimum.)
In practice many people have 40h/w contracts and then get extra days off (35h/ w being the standard, you save 5h per week) which amounts to an extra 15 days I think over a year.
