France will not have a budget for 2026 by natural means and once again, the government will have to use forceps. Between recourse to article 49.3 of the Constitution, that is to say a blocked vote, and the method of the ordinance, he seems to have chosen to legislate using the second tool at his hand. Clearly, the executive arrogates to itself the right to authoritatively write an initial finance law and decides everything. It is still democracy since the Constitution of our Fifth Republic allows it, but we clearly feel that the national representation is losing all power and that it is in some way ignored. It is undoubtedly to temper this feeling among the French that the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, after interrupting the debates in the National Assembly on Thursday evening, just after the examination of the article concerning the tax status of the private investor, wanted to speak to the country. He did so on Friday at 6:30 p.m.
Let’s move on to the part of his speech accusing the extremes of having prevented agreements which would have allowed the normal vote of a budget. Let’s move on to his remarks concerning housing, first to recognize that he gave this subject major importance, making it, according to his analysis, the third concern of households. We can even go further: he identified the need to increase rental supply as the priority of housing policy, and this is proof of his lucidity or his attention to the pleas of intermediary bodies.
The risks of a lastingly insufficient rental supply
For the rest, the Prime Minister used words that were poorly suited to the urgency of the situation: “We are going to lay the foundations for a private lessor status“. But anyway, what are we talking about? Decades of years that the German model of depreciation has been cited as an example, years that reports have multiplied, signed by the National Council for Refoundation, the National Housing Council, parliament (the Daubresse Cosson report) and Sébastien Lecornu speaks of “lay the foundations»… The time for fundamental reflection, for laying foundations, has passed. We must act. The terms, while the Prime Minister is not of this type, are technocratic and cold. We hope for those who inspired them that, taken to the hospital emergency room because they are suffering to the highest degree, they will not be asked to multiply additional tests and return with the results.
The moment of truth has comeafter all the political episodes that the system has experienced, so that the page is ultimately blank. To the point that there remain two outcomes: either the Prime Minister, who now arbitrates the major options of the ordinances, creates a depreciation of the new and the old with powerful works, or it will be held accountable that the insufficiency of the rental supply has not been dealt with. The economic and political price to pay will be considerable.
Colossal losses for state coffers
The economic price is the billion euros of VAT resourcesin transfer rights for consideration and social contributions linked to job creation, which will not enter the state coffers if nothing is done. On the first position alone, from the first twelve months, we can wait 40,000 more sales in new construction, generating around 2 billion VATand as much in the former, reporting the order ofa billion transfer rightsand also catchy 3 billion jobs leading to the collection of 600 million TVsA. Construction companies will have to recruit, with favorable consequences in terms of social charges paid, and corporate tax thanks to the increase in turnover.
Still in the order of figures, the annual cost announced to the National Assembly by the Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin, is fanciful: 5 billion ! Calculated with a wet finger, it shatters when we read the Daubresse-Cosson report, which establishes that it contributes to public finances from the first year. An approximation or a state lie in the situation of our country is a scandal. Out of disenchantment with real estate or to hide savings that we have not dared politically, such as the reform of the pension system, we have the nerve to say anything about a vital measure for housing.
A breathless private park
On a social level, can Sébastien Lecornu ignore that hundreds of thousands of households are placed under house arrest, by enduring overcrowding, by not separating when a decision has been made – putting a broken couple at risk of violence -, by missing out on a professional opportunity or training, in short by enduring suffering? The constant lengthening of the queue for obtain HLM housing is also an indication that the private park is running out of steam. Rental tension has increased further, despite a resumption of transactions by 10% because at the same time the rental candidates increased by 15%with sales prices and interest rates that deprive 20% of potential first-time buyers from being able to buy, and which thus weigh on rental demand.
At the same time, the 9/10 rental investments in the new have disappeared and 4/10 in the old, 55,000 rental housing on one side and 70,000 on the other. Not to mention the divestments by French people who are sickened by the weight of taxation, compared to the obligations – they are beneficial – to carry out expensive work to improve energy performance under penalty of being banned from renting.
Finally, let the Prime Minister avoid the worst: take a optical measurementeye candy to put it simply. If the data from the system does not provide a sufficient rental yield, and all the calculations have been made on this subject, it will be a complete failure. As with antibiotics, if you do not take the prescribed dose, no results can be expected. What was voted on Thursday evening at 8 p.m. by the deputies before the Head of Government declared the debates interrupted, must be taken up without modification. Why would it be otherwise? Any weakening of the rates or conditions for imputation of land deficits, any addition of conditions to benefit from the measure, will ruin its effects.
The need for a minimum return to convince investors
With this perverse satisfaction of being able to claim to have helped the sector and the French on balance, by having pretended to do so. Professionals will detect the deception. Moreover, the wealth management consultancy association told the truth: if the measure does not generate a yield of 2 or 3%its members cannot advise its use to investors, unless they incur liability! Who would put debt on the table, the commitment of part of their savings, would expose themselves to the risk of rental arrears, in 2026, for a return of 1%, or even less according to certain amendments suggested in recent days by the government?
Moreover, a sign of the times, the Minister of the City and Housing, Vincent Jeanbrun, is very silent and in Parliament itself lets his colleague from Bercy scrap in his place. More likely, Bercy prefers to impose a narrowly accounting and insincere approach rather than allowing a strong act of housing policy to be written. We know that the minister is upset about what is happening and this is to the credit of this lucid man, who was mayor for ten years of a town near Paris where rental tension is rife. He worked discreetly at consensus which formed in the Assembly, leading to the vote on the correct provision. The former Minister of Housing, now an MP, the former Prime Minister, party leader, mobilized for this result. Are we going to despise the work of several months of a woman and a statesman? The Republic is doing badly, democracy is doing badly: it is time to take care of it and respect those who fight so that the families who live there have solutions for housing.
Let’s not kid ourselves: housing has become a major political choice and sensitivities which have failed to inspire an effective policy, or which have prevented it, will be violently sanctioned by citizens.
This is all that will play out before our eyes over the coming hours.
