PARIS — New French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is spending his first days on the job trying to get rid of his predecessor’s baggage.

Lecornu is making it clear that he will do things very differently than François Bayrou, whose government was toppled Monday over his €43.8 billion budget squeeze meant to balance the books.

The 39-year-old kicked off his tenure Wednesday by looking Bayrou in the eye and saying it is time to do things differently once negotiations with opposition parties begin.

Translation?

“We are not going to adopt François Bayrou’s budget proposal, removing the elimination of public holidays and adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” said someone close to Lecornu who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations with other political parties.

The Lecornu ally said that could mean drafting “a new budget” to appease the center-left Socialists, a potential negotiating partner.

French President Emmanuel Macron, whom Lecornu is very close to, seems to approve of the plan. Shortly after Bayrou’s fall, Macron said in off-the-record comments obtained by POLITICO that the new prime minister will have to “revisit a few things.”

The trick will be crafting a budget that both the conservative Les Républicains and Socialists, who voted to oust Bayrou, can stomach. The parties fundamentally disagree on how to address market and investor concerns about the stability of French public finances. The country is sitting on €3.3 trillion of debt and its budget deficit is projected to come in at 5.4 percent of gross domestic product this year.

After promising “more serious work” with opposition parties, Lecornu has been trying to convince the Socialists that he is ready to make concessions.

Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure said in an interview he wants Lecornu to rule out using a constitutional backdoor to pass the budget and endorse a tax on the super-rich.

For now, though, the Socialists are taking a wait-and-see approach to examine how Lecornu plans to go about negotiations differently than Bayrou.

“What interests us are the terms, what method he will propose to us to bring about a different approach,” said someone close to Faure who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “We would rather avoid [another] ensure in the end, the French are fed up with it.”