Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the National Rally (RN) for the French presidential election, has proposed a referendum on a "golden rule" budget if elected president. The goal is to eventually bring France's public debt down to 60% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as outlined in an op-ed in the newspaper L'Opinion. Le Pen has outlined three main objectives for this measure: to implement the most powerful fiscal consolidation since General de Gaulle's Pinay-Rueff plan of 1958, to restore the confidence of the French people in themselves, and to anchor this confidence in the expectations of international investors, foreign partners, and French economic actors. Le Pen emphasized that France's future should not depend on being "too big to fall" or on accepting that the "noose of debt strangles us." She noted that the 60% of GDP figure for debt is inscribed in European treaties, while France's current debt reaches 119% of the national wealth. She acknowledged that the RN's political tradition was previously "averse to any form of golden rule budget" but justified her change of stance by her desire to end "the decline" and avoid "the tutelage of France." Le Pen described the irony that a party once defamed is now the only one capable of addressing the "stables of Augeas" of the system that opposed it. She outlined that for 2027, the maximum allowed deficit would be 2.4% and proposed a reduction of the public deficit by 125 billion euros over five years. She is to detail the specific measures of this plan next Tuesday. Le Pen explained that the golden rule would impose a deficit systematically below the stabilizing threshold of debt, allowing the debt to be reduced each year in proportion to the GDP. She provided an example that for 2027, the maximum allowed deficit would be 2.4% according to current macroeconomic assumptions. However, she also outlined mechanisms to mitigate the impact of this adjustment on growth. The government of Sebastien Lecornu presented a budget proposal for 2027 aiming to bring the deficit down to 5% of GDP, against 5.4% this year. Le Pen specified that the golden rule must provide for a simple sanction to guarantee its strict application, including validation of assumptions by the High Council of Public Finances, ensuring that the Parliament only votes on finance bills respecting the mentioned criteria, and ensuring the Constitutional Council does not validate any insincere text.