"If François Bayrou wants to open dialogue and for France to have a budget, then he must radically change his position," says Philippe Brun, Socialist Party MP in Eure.

This text is a portion of the transcript of the interview above. Click on the video to watch it in full.

France Télévisions: What do you think of Emmanuel Macron's initiative to bring Europeans into the duo of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?

Philippe Brun: It was about time. This is the first time, in our recent history and over the last five years, that the future of Europe has been decided without her. And there's not much to expect from tomorrow's summit, as the absence of Europeans and Ukrainians makes the dialogue inevitably doomed to failure. So the President of the Republic is right to bang his fist on the table. And it was about time, because we've been left out of the discussions for some time now.

Unlike last February, when the Socialist Party did not vote for the motion of censure on the 2025 budget, are you determined to vote for one in the coming weeks?

First of all, it's a change in the Prime Minister's stance. In January, the Prime Minister was the one who opened up the dialogue. He allowed us to achieve many victories. Jérôme Guedj and I went to negotiate. We had obtained more than 12 billion euros in concessions to protect the working and middle classes. This is a different story. We have the impression that the Prime Minister is ultimately trying to leave. He's organizing his exit. He made announcements on his own on July 15, then decided, throughout the summer, to chronicle his departure. He even went so far as to publish, on his party's (Modem) account, a visual comparing Olivier Faure, our first secretary, to Marine Le Pen.

Did that irritate you?

It's very strange. Someone who has the country's interest at heart must discuss with everyone to get a budget adopted, because the country's interest is that we succeed in adopting a budget. And François Bayrou is wasting the country's time, causing many businesses, many shopkeepers, many artisans to lose money. If he wants to leave, let him leave now. If he wants to open dialogue and for France to have a budget, then he must radically change his position.

Could you hold him back with proposals from your side in order to negotiate as was the case last February?

It is Parliament that votes on the budget. And it is our power to give a budget to France and our duty is to adopt a budget. What we see is that there is almost nothing to take away from the Bayrou plan . It is a plan that hits hard-working France, that gets up early, that essentially involves the working and middle classes, and that leaves aside all those who have benefited from the crisis, in particular the very wealthy. In September, we will present our own plan that will be balanced, that will protect the working and middle classes, that will establish tax justice, and that will reduce the effort, because we want to avoid austerity and spread the budgetary effort over time. We want this to be the basis for discussion with the government, because we cannot discuss a Bayrou plan that currently seems outdated to us.

Is this a kind of counter-budget that could serve as a basis for negotiations with François Bayrou so that you do not vote for a possible motion of censure?

The Socialists will state their position, what their plan is, what we believe should be a point of discussion with all the groups in the National Assembly: preserving growth, preserving investment, protecting the working and middle classes, boosting consumption, which is terribly low today in our country, and at the same time restoring our public finances. We will make this proposal at the start of the school year, and we believe that this should be the basis for discussion, not this Bayrou plan, which is now unanimously opposed, even within his own majority. I debated a few days ago with a Modem MP, and very few MPs are ready to vote for it. We therefore need a new plan.

Can you give us an outline of your proposal?

First, the effort must be reduced to 43 billion because we believe that austerity must be avoided. And as a number of major institutes explain, the effort must be spread out over time, otherwise it will definitively break an economy that is already in serious difficulty. Then, we must obviously involve those who have benefited from the crisis, such as the very wealthy, who have been completely exempt from making any efforts for the past eight years. Since 2017, 50 billion in tax cuts per year have been given to these very wealthy individuals.