France proposes cutting 2 public holidays to avert budget crisis
By The New York Times, July 16, 2025France’s prime minister warned on Tuesday that the country faced a Greek-scale financial crisis if it doesn’t act decisively to rein in its ballooning debt and deficit. He proposed a series of drastic measures to mend the nation’s budget, including scrapping two national holidays.
In a sobering speech to lawmakers and members of President Emmanuel Macron’s Cabinet, Prime Minister François Bayrou said France’s debt had risen higher than that of almost every other country in Europe, reaching 114% of gross domestic product. Bringing it down in the coming years will require freezing nonmilitary spending and encouraging the French to “work more.”
“It’s the last stop before the cliff, before we are crushed by the debt,” Bayrou said.
President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 30% tariffs on European Union goods poses an additional risk to the French and European economies, he added.
Bayrou’s spending cuts would include not replacing one out of three civil servants when they retired and eliminating “unproductive” state agencies. He would also scale back France’s subsidies for prescription medicine, saying the French “consume twice as many antibiotics as the Germans.”
The measure most likely to rankle the French was a proposal to scrap two national holidays: Easter Monday and May 8, which commemorates the end of the World War II in Europe.
“It’s the entire country going back to work on a day it hasn’t worked for a long time,” he said, adding that the holiday cuts would bring “several billion euros” to French coffers because of higher production. France has 11 national public holidays, the same as the United States.
The belt-tightening proposals, part of an outline for the 2026 budget that parliament will consider later in the year, are likely to renew public furor over France’s finances. In recent years, raucous demonstrations have rocked France over an increase in the retirement age — a move taken by Macron to curb government spending, which, at 57% of GDP, is among the highest in Europe.
As the head of a minority government with a parliament divided into three opposing camps, Bayrou could be out of office before completing the job of trying to fix France’s finances. His overall plan drew an immediate rebuke from the right and the left.