1. Constitutional prohibition
Ordinary structural deficits become legally inadmissible.
CORE ARCHITECTURE · CONSTITUTION · ACCOUNTABILITY
The core rebuilding architecture: budget balance, automatic correction and accountability
The core framework of the Plan de Rupture: ban structural deficits, pre-screen budgets, correct slippage automatically and create legally bounded personal accountability.
— Financing engine for the 30% target
The site now separates the political objective of sharply reducing levies from the decisive question: how far can taxes fall without recreating the deficit?
The rule that must govern every other reform
Published Plan The public dossier makes budget balance a constitutional rule: the State, local authorities and social-security bodies could not adopt an unbalanced budget outside narrowly defined exceptions. The source text also makes a finance bill inadmissible when its structural balance breaches the constitutional rule.
Architecture: permanent tax cuts must not be financed by fresh deficits. Structural savings first restore balance; tax reduction and debt reduction then follow a published trajectory.
The public Plan develops this architecture on printed pages 250–252. Read the public dossier →
Six locks
2. Independent certification
The HCFP checks assumptions and compliance before filing.
3. Automatic correction
Execution slippage triggers pre-defined measures while protecting sovereign functions.
4. Decision traceability
Assumptions, warnings, decisions and signatures are preserved.
5. Personal accountability
Deliberate or grossly negligent budget misconduct may lead to personal sanctions after judgment.
6. Narrow exceptions
A genuine crisis may temporarily justify deficits, with limits, duration and a return-to-balance plan.
What exists today and what would change
The current Constitution assigns national policy to the Government and gives Parliament law-making and oversight roles. Parliament votes finance bills. The HCFP currently issues public assessments of realism and fiscal trajectories, but its opinions are not binding. The proposal would turn influence-based scrutiny into a prior legal lock.
Strong accountability without arbitrariness
Core safeguard: private assets are never seized because a policy was unpopular or a forecast proved wrong. Any asset-based penalty requires a pre-existing rule, a precisely defined offence, adversarial procedure, an independent court and a final judgment.
The French constitutional rights framework requires legally defined and necessary penalties, presumption of innocence and protection of property. The architecture must therefore combine strict duties with strict safeguards.
Legal and institutional sources
French Constitution, Article 20 — Government role.
Article 24 and Article 47 — Parliament and finance bills.
Article 26 — parliamentary non-liability for opinions and votes.
Article 67 and Article 68-1 — President and Government criminal regimes.
Financial Courts Code L.131-2, L.131-9 and sanctions L.131-16 et seq.
HCFP official missions; Swiss debt brake; German Basic Law Article 115.
: the lock becomes a full legal system
The new version develops the constitutional amendment article by article, a fiscal-council Organic Act, mandatory constitutional review, a public warning register and a narrowly defined criminal-law prototype.
: the rule has now been stress-tested against history
The 1993-2025 screen shows persistent nominal deficits and demonstrates that the source Plan's fixed 2% crisis cap would be too rigid for shocks such as 2009 or 2020. The working architecture therefore combines a strict ordinary rule with a certified escape clause, extraordinary account and future amortisation.
Return to the project’s core framework
This page is part of the package on constitutional fiscal rules and accountability of public decision-makers.