00:00France's seemingly endless budget discussions might finally be bearing fruit.
00:05On Friday, the National Assembly backed the extension of a special tax on high incomes
00:09after Prime Minister Sébastien Le Corneau called on MPs to embrace compromise.
00:15We can no longer govern only through the will of one camp,
00:19but through a culture of challenging debates between deputies
00:22who initially hold different convictions.
00:24This is a quiet revolution in Parliament.
00:26Le Corneau may well hope his quiet revolution takes hold
00:30as he leads an embattled government that's faced several votes of no confidence.
00:35The oppositionist socialists are threatening another one
00:37if they don't win concessions on the budget.
00:40What we want is action.
00:43He spoke about compromise.
00:44For the moment, I don't know what compromise he's talking about.
00:47One of the socialists' top demands is being debated this weekend.
00:51It's called the Zuckmann tax,
00:52so wealth tax that would target around 1,800 of France's richest households
00:56and, the socialists calculate, would raise 15 billion euros.
01:01But MPs from the Conservative Republican Party have no intention of compromising.
01:06Our position is very clear.
01:08We are against all tax increases and we are in favour of spending cuts.
01:11And we will not bow to pressure from the Socialist Party on this issue.
01:14But the Socialists' targeting of wealth isn't absolute.
01:21On Friday, a proposal by the hard left to crack down on tax havens
01:25failed to pass by a single vote after Socialist deputies abstained.
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