France will keep its public holidays.
The new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, announced on Saturday that he will scrap proposals from his predecessor to eliminate two public holidays as part of a belt-tightening drive to shrink France’s massive public debt.
“I have decided to withdraw the abolition of two public holidays,” Lecornu said in an interview with several French newspapers.
“It is always in times of deadlock and tension that our country has moved forward,” he said. “My state of mind is simple: I want neither instability nor immobility.”
Lecornu is doing his best to distance himself from the budget cuts that François Bayrou tried and failed to push through the French assembly, leading to his downfall on Sept. 8.
France is trying to rein in its spending to reduce its debt pile of €3.3 trillion and a budget deficit equal to 5.4 percent of the country’s economic output.
But a split legislature has brought French policymaking to a standstill, since President Emmanuel Macron called snap parliamentary elections last year. Lecornu will be the latest premier to try to secure a budget with the support of the center-left Socialists and the conservative Les Républicains.
“I want to tell the French … we will get there,” Lecornu said earlier this week at the official handover ceremony, standing alongside Bayrou.
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