Paris: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has ruled out any change to the government’s economic programme, despite its failure so far to produce growth or make a dent in record unemployment.
“Yes, the policy that the President of the Republic has decided to implement needs time to show results. But there’s no question of changing it,” Valls told Le Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday newspaper.
His remarks came three days after the release of statistics showing the Eurozone’s second-largest economy failing to grow in the second quarter, for a second consecutive three-month period.
Finance Minister Michel Sapin said the absence of growth would affect government revenues and cause it to miss a budget deficit target of 3.8 per cent of GDP by around 0.2 percentage points.
Without growth the jobs crisis is also expected to drag on into 2015.
The government is pinning its hopes for a recovery on a “Responsibility Pact” with business, under which the state slashes employer payroll taxes by €41 billion ($55 billion) by 2017 in return for commitments on job creation.
“If we don’t support companies on (boosting) their competitiveness, the country will not recover,” Valls argued,
Six years into the crisis the French are growing impatient with the government’s failure to produce results.
An IFOP poll published by Le Journal du Dimanche showed only 16 per cent of voters trusted the government to stimulate growth and only 15 per cent believing it could tackle unemployment, currently at over 10 per cent.
