To finance the “social and ecological needs of the French”, Éric Coquerel announced that LFI planned to “relaunch activity through income from work”. This involves an “increase in the index point of civil servants, frozen by Emmanuel Macron eight years out of ten”. “It will cost 17 billion euros,” he said.
The far-left party also intends to index all pensions and social benefits and to increase APL by 10%, at a cost of 8 billion euros.
LFI announces that it wants to guarantee an income for all young people in training. “It is absolutely essential, to prevent them from looking for small, precarious jobs,” said Éric Coquerel. It will cost 9.5 billion euros.
“We also plan an increase in the minimum wage to 1,700 euros net,” indicated the president of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly. “The purchasing power of employees has been declining for four years,” he lamented. Concerning fuels, LFI plans to tax Total “at the refinery level”.
A first rebellious budget for the year 2027 would propose “106.4 billion” euros in revenue and “81.7 billion” in expenditure, in the event of Jean-Luc Mélenchon entering the Élysée, Éric Coquerel, LFI president of the Assembly's Finance Committee, announced on Wednesday.
This “corrective” budget, which would replace the version of Sébastien Lecornu’s budget which will be ratified for 2027 before the presidential election, would be a response to the “dominant culture” of “neoliberalism”, argued Jean-Luc Mélenchon before him, accusing Presidents Macron, Hollande and Sarkozy of having organized “the methodical and organized impoverishment of the State”.
Determined to lower France's contribution to the EU budget, Marine Le Pen says she expects "a standoff" with the European Commission and the leaders of other member states if she is elected. In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, she also calls into question the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who according to her “no longer has the confidence of many governments”. The boss of the RN prepares the ground before going to Brussels in the evening for a meeting with her European allies.
She intends to establish a balance of power with Ursula von der Leyen, whom she wants to force to accept her conditions. Starting with a strong reduction in the French contribution to the EU budget. “When we say (that) we are going to lower the net contribution to the European Union, we know that there is a firm debate, and even a standoff to be waged. With the European Union, we do not say: “We snap our fingers and presto, we decide that…”. We are absolutely aware of it, but the fact remains that we have this desire and that we are convinced that we will succeed,” she declared to the Financial Times – which transmitted to AFP certain full quotes, not published in its articles.
To win her case, the favorite of the polls has already suggested recently that she was concretely considering cutting payments to the EU, emphasizing that “the hand that gives is always above the one that receives”.
During the report of the Council of Ministers this Wednesday, Maud Bregeon called on all political forces to agree on a budget. “We call on all parties, all political forces, 577 deputies to come around the table,” declared the government spokesperson. “It is a question of agreeing on a budget for four months,” she continued, citing “a difficult national and international situation”, as well as “economic and budgetary constraints which are very strong”.
“It would not be in anyone’s interest, neither the French, nor the political forces, nor the presidential candidates,” she insisted, to take the risk of “depriving France of a budget for seven or eight months.” A period which would extend, according to her, “until the installation of a new parliament after a probable dissolution of the National Assembly next May or June”.
The standoff between Richard Ferrand and the National Rally continues. Sébastien Chenu estimated that the President of the Constitutional Council should “not get involved in internal politics”, inviting him to “return to his duty of reserve”. “Only the President is the guardian of the Constitution,” he declared on Sud Radio.
This controversy broke out on Tuesday October 13, after statements by Richard Ferrand in a podcast published on October 9 concerning Marine Le Pen's desire to organize a referendum to modify the Constitution, if she is elected president - in particular to include the principle of national preference. Richard Ferrand then affirmed that such a revision cannot go through article 11, contrary to what the RN envisages. It refers to article 89.
“I am very worried about the role that Richard Ferrand is taking on. He has a duty of reserve, an opinion which seems to me to be that of a politician and not of a president of the Constitutional Council. And even more false because article 11 was used twice by General de Gaulle,” commented Sébastien Chenu. For the vice-president of the RN, the Constitutional Council “cannot replace the President of the Republic, who has the last word”.
Yannick Jadot, environmentalist senator and former presidential candidate, attacked Marine Tondelier, accusing her of being at the origin of a loss of party support.
“It’s a political line problem. For three years, under the leadership of Marine Tondelier, environmentalists have lost two thirds of their voters. “By no longer being the political movement with its ideas, its solutions to climate change, the agricultural crisis and social injustices,” he added the one who was temporarily excluded from the Ecologists, speaking to Radio RCF this morning.
“Marine Tondelier has become this link between left-wing parties. Unsurprisingly, we lost all our voters,” he continued. Yannick Jadot called for people to get behind the candidacy of Raphaël Glucksmann “who is putting himself in the position to win on the values which have forged the history of political ecology”.
Fabien Roussel, communist candidate in the presidential election, welcomed Wednesday the multiplicity of candidates who represent “different sensibilities” and “strengthen” the left. “There are three of us today on the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Raphaël Glucksmann and myself. The French must have the freedom to choose the program to which they feel closest,” declared the national secretary of the Communist Party on RTL.
Denying that these multiple candidacies endanger the presence of the left in the second round, the communist asserts on the contrary that “they strengthen it (...) when we have programs which have different sensitivities. For example, I am talking about work, the creation of wealth, the reindustrialization of France,” he highlighted.
Given between 2 and 3% in the polls, Fabien Roussel is far behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Raphaël Glucksmann but “we are only at the start of the campaign”, he put it into perspective. He also supported the calls to demonstrate on October 17 because “we must hear this anger which is boiling in our country and which means that people can no longer bear working without being able to live with dignity”.
9:30 a.m., October 13, 2026. 187 days before the first round of the presidential election, David Lisnard's Parisian anthill is active. Before joining his Nouvelle Énergie team, the candidate is on the air of BFMTV Tuesday morning. We ask him about the high school crisis, education, the budget... Once again, we ask him to explain why he still believes in an expanded primary.
Once again, he replies that this is the only way to sort right. At the end of August, during his back-to-school meeting, we saw him leap onto the Cannes stage at Mont Cassien. In the fever of an Elvis Presley remix, he demanded a competition. “To eliminate the Macronists,” he said publicly. “Those who raised the extremes are part of the problem,” he repeated Tuesday morning, consistently.
