France’s new prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has rejected the suggestion that the opposition Parti Socialiste might weigh in on his 2026 budget plans. Shooting down each of the center-left party’s demands, Lecornu spurned talk of a suspension of President Emmanuel Macron’s 2023 retirement age hike. He dismissed calls for a targeted levy on the country’s largest fortunes, or even for the reinstatement of a smaller wealth tax on private assets, scrapped at the beginning of Macron’s presidency.

In short, Macron’s close confidant wants to double down on a program of fiscal austerity, which will hit working- and middle-class French people the hardest. The president’s allies point to the country’s swollen budget deficit — expected to hit 5.4 percent of GDP in 2025, the current highest in the eurozone — to argue for a package of spending and welfare cuts.

Yet Lecornu is far from having the parliamentary majority that he’d need to force through such an unpopular and unbalanced economic program. One month after the deeply divided parliament ousted the previous premier François Bayrou, the Macronite center is again digging in behind its red lines.