N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
He is suggesting Easter Monday and May 8, the day that commemorate the Allies’ victory over Nazi-Germany at the end of World War Two. It raised a storm of protest.
Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the words ‘Le moment de vérité’ (The moment of truth), Bayrou spoke over a series of daring measures that he said should bring the annual budget deficit under control. He stressed that France, the eurozone’s second economy after Germany, was in ‘mortal danger’ of being crushed by debt.
Other measures than cutting the two public holidays, would be cutting public spending and a reduction of civil servants. Pressed by reporters after his speech, Bayrou said his proposal was ‘basic authentic’. ‘We need to find more than €40 billion’, he argued, to rein in debt that, he said, grows by €5000 every second!
Bayrou runs the risk of having his budget for next year voted down in the parliament (the Assemblée Generale), which will cause the collapse of his minority government. The embattled centrist prime minister has only been in the job since December, following on the short-lived premiership of Michel Barnier.
He used executive powers to push the budget through, a move proved unacceptable for the opposition, far-right Marine le Pen’s Rassemblement National and the combination of (radical-) left parties on the other side, together a clear majority in the parliament. Barnier’s government collapsed through a non-confidence vote.
These two parliamentarian factions are now threatening to do the same again when Bayrou put his budget unchanged to a vote in autumn.
