French government harshly criticises Marine Le Pen's counter-budget

The French government launched a sharp attack on the alternative budget proposal put forward by Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) party, branding it economically unworkable.

Members of the French executive described the counter-budget in terms such as its authors "dreaming in colour" and dismissed it as "a Potemkin budget, made of cardboard", alluding to a façade with no real substance. They also reproached it for containing "purely rhetorical and utterly inapplicable measures".

Le Pen's proposal comes at a moment of acute budgetary pressure in France, where the government is seeking to reduce the public deficit amid parliamentary instability and resistance from several political quarters to new fiscal adjustments.

Rassemblement National, the main opposition party by number of seats, has used its counter-proposal to position itself as a credible governing alternative on economic matters — a terrain on which it has traditionally faced greater scepticism than on immigration or security issues.

The clash between the executive and the right-wing opposition heralds a particularly fraught parliamentary debate over the budget bill for the coming fiscal year, in a fragmented parliament where the government lacks an absolute majority.