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LEFT Front leader Jean-Luc Melenchon slammed “an economic policy that has never worked in any country and will never work” yesterday after France unveiled huge spending cuts in its annual budget.
Finance Minister Michel Sapin bragged about “unprecedented” savings while claiming the government “refuses to implement austerity.”
EU chiefs were unimpressed with a plan that asks for further delays before France gets below the arbitrary Brussels deficit cap of 3 per cent of GDP, but Mr Sapin claimed spending cuts of €21 billion (£16.7bn) — mostly to healthcare, local government grants and child allowances — showed he was “aware of the seriousness of the budgetary situation.”
He also said the sale of €4bn (£3.2bn) in public assets would help France pay off its debts.
President Francois Hollande, whose capitulation to the EU on cuts to tax and public spending has made him the least popular French president in history, is planning to break up state monopolies, cut public-sector jobs and cap pay rises.
It’s not enough for Brussels, which is calling for France to emulate the catastrophic attacks on working conditions and welfare seen in southern European countries such as Greece and Spain.
EU-enforced austerity programmes in both countries have ruined their economies and caused unemployment to soar.
Mr Melenchon said the French economy would “pay dearly” for dancing to the bankers’ tune.
“Scaremongering” over debt was “an absurd way of counting which takes no account of the use made of the money,” he said.
Slashing allowances for all but first-born children was “totally cruel and absolutely stupid,” he warned, arguing it would negatively affect a stagnant birth rate.
And he laid into a president who was cutting vital public services at home while wasting money by “declaring war [on Isis in Iraq] without asking anyone. One day he declares war, the next we’re bombing, four days later the National Assembly meets — and doesn’t vote on it,” he snarled.
The Left Front leader called for a “new alliance” of trade unions and parties to build a “left opposition” to the Socialist Party government.