French Gov’t Flip Flops and Invokes Constitutional Loophole to Pass Budget Without a Vote

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu walked back on the central founding promise of his government on Monday evening by announcing that he would invoke his anti-democratic Article 49.3 emergency powers to pass a leftist-inspired budget without a vote from the National Assembly.

Despite the constitutional loophole ultimately dooming multiple of his recent predecessors and having promised to seek compromise in a bid to balance the nation’s books, Prime Minister Lecornu said that with “regret” he would use the article to pass the federal budget.

The battle over the budget saw two prime ministers be voted out of office after attempting to use 49.3 over the past year, as well as Lecornu resigning from office in September over failure to reach consensus on a