Public spending cuts ain’t austerity, French Prime Minister François Bayrou argued on Thursday in his latest push to save his minority government from collapsing.
“This is not austerity, it is a slowdown in additional [public] spending so that the country can recover,” he told a conference organized by France’s largest employers’ association, MEDEF.
Bayrou’s speech was the latest stop on his blitz public relations campaign to convince voters that their elected representatives who plan to take down his government over an unpopular €43.8 billion budget squeeze are making a major mistake.
“We are living in a critical moment in our national history,” Bayrou said. “Our heritage, the landscapes we have inherited, and the cultural wealth of our country, are under threat. Every business and every family is threatened by the decline of our public finances.”
Bayrou on Monday announced he would hold a confidence vote on Sept. 8 to seek parliament’s approval to forge ahead with his slimmed down budget for next year. The spending plans are designed to rein in the budget deficit and assuage French creditors, financial institutions and ratings agencies concerned by the country’s unsustainable levels of public spending.
Opposition lawmakers, however, have already come out against the longtime centrist and said they would use the vote to bring down his government.
In the days that have followed, the prime minister has taken to the airwaves to convince voters directly of the need to balance France’s books and express an openness to negotiation — so long as his political opponents agree on the need for drastic action.
“These proposals [to cut public spending] are all open for discussion and can be amended, provided that they do not undermine the outcome of the necessary effort that needs to be made,” Bayrou said.
During his speech Bayrou hit back at his critics, saying “they have it all wrong” and are actually working against securing a prosperous economy for the next generation.
“We are accepting that [young people] are being enslaved by having them spend decades repaying loans that were so lightly contracted by previous generations,” he said.
The prime minister and his allies have warned that without a course correction, the eurozone’s second largest economy could face a debt crisis on the level of the one that rocked the European Union in the 2010s.
“Just look at the example of all the countries around us — Spain, Portugal, Italy, not to mention Greece — which had to make unprecedented sacrifices to get their public finances back on track,” he said.
The post Bayrou: My €44 billion budget squeeze ‘is not austerity’ appeared first on Politico.
