PARIS (Reuters) – The fall of the government leaves France without a clear path toward reducing its budgetary deficit, credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P) said on Thursday.

With less than four weeks until the end of the year, and even less time remaining until the Dec. 21 deadline to pass the budget, regardless of whether a new government is formed, S&P Global Ratings believes that the likelihood of an amended 2025 budget plan to be passed by year-end 2024 is low,” it said.

S&P added in a note that under most scenarios, it would expect “considerably less budgetary consolidation than implied by the measures—including new taxes—proposed by the former government.”

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)