French Government is willing to bypass parliament to pass billions in cuts, WSJ reports

France resorting to constitutional mechanisms to force through budget measures without a parliamentary vote is a well-worn route, used by governments of both left and right when a working majority is lacking, and it has typically carried a specific cost: the measure passes, but a no-confidence motion follows almost automatically, leaving the government's survival as the operative question rather than the bill itself. The transmission channel into markets runs through the OAT-Bund spread, which has tended to widen on evidence that French fiscal consolidation is politically contested and to compress when a credible path is demonstrated; the distinction worth drawing is between the mechanical fact of the bypass, which markets have largely learned to absorb, and what it signals about the durability of any consolidation effort. France's track record here is one of repeated deficit slippage against commitments, prior episodes of EU excessive-deficit scrutiny, and street-level resistance to retrenchment, all of which has historically made announced savings figures less bankable than the headline number. The follow-ons are the scale and composition of the cuts, whether a censure motion materialises and its arithmetic, the response of the ratings agencies which have form on French sovereign actions, and any shift in tone from Brussels. As a press report rather than an official announcement, the detail may move, but the constitutional route itself is established precedent.