“You have to know what you want. When you know it, you have to have the courage to say it; when you say it, you have to have the courage to do it. » With a 2027 budget rejected without a single vote in favor, the Assembly above all showed that it no longer knew what it wanted.
Indeed, on the evening of Wednesday, November 4, the National Assembly rejected the revenue part of the 2027 finance bill by 458 votes to 0. Three weeks of debate and hundreds of amendments resulted in a text that even the central bloc deputies no longer wanted to defend. The stablecoin tax passed by one vote on October 16 disappears with it.
The project is now returning to the Senate in the initial version tabled by the Lecornu government at the beginning of October. Everything that the deputies had added, removed or tinkered with during the session is erased.
The result is surprising, but the mechanics are known. Since the opening of the debates on October 13, each group has had amendments adopted against the advice of the government, often with convenient majorities. On October 15, article 3 on the reduction for retirees was voted down by 116 votes to 30. The next day, the left withdrew its tax on conversions into stablecoins. And so on, for three weeks.
Upon arrival, the text no longer looked like anything. “Indigestible”, “without coherence”, “contradictory”, in the words noted by LCP in the hemicycle on November 4. The left judged revenues to be insufficient, the right and the National Rally denounced an avalanche of taxes, and the central bloc refused to carry a budget that it no longer recognized. Everyone had their reason to vote against.
Did you follow the successive postponements of the vote? It was supposed to take place on November 3, then slipped. The first part of the PLF 2027 finally fell the next day, thirteen days before the deadline of November 17 at midnight set by the Constitution for the first reading in the Assembly.
Stablecoin tax starts from scratch with crypto amendments
For cryptocurrency holders, the rejection of the 2027 budget has an immediate effect. Nicolas Sansu's amendment I-3898 removed the tax deferment on exchanges of cryptos for stablecoins compliant with MiCA (the European regulation on cryptoassets). Converting bitcoin into USDC would have become a taxable event on January 1, 2027, at a flat tax of 31.4%. Adopted by 38 votes to 37, the device only lasted nineteen days.
Same fate for the five crypto amendments adopted in the Finance Committee. The Senate will not see any: it receives the government's text, not that of the deputies. The legislative file of the National Assembly confirms it, the shuttle starts again from the original copy.
Nothing prevents senators from reintroducing taxation of stablecoins by amendment. But the right and center senatorial majority rarely followed the communist group's tax amendments. The chances of seeing it return through the upper house are slim. On the other hand, it could resurface in a joint committee, or in a new reading in the Assembly, if the text returns there one day.
49.3 or special law: the options remaining for Sébastien Lecornu
The constitutional calendar does not stop, however. Parliament has 70 days in total to decide on a budget, until mid-December. The Senate has 20 days for its first reading. Then, three paths remain open to the Prime Minister, and none is comfortable.
Firstly, 49.3, which Sébastien Lecornu had already put on the table at the end of October when the revenue vote slipped for the first time. It allows the text to be adopted without a vote, at the risk of a motion of censure in an Assembly where no majority exists. The ordinances then, if the 70-day period expires without a vote, a weapon never used under the Fifth Republic for a budget. Finally, the special law, this emergency text which authorizes the State to collect existing taxes without a new budget. France used it in December 2024 after the fall of the Barnier government. The 2026 budget itself ended up passing without a vote in Parliament.
The social context doesn't help. This Thursday, November 5, the unions are calling for a day of strike against the high cost of living, with inflation at 3.4% in October. It is difficult to imagine a government taking responsibility for an austerity budget on the very evening of a national mobilization.
