French fights deficit half-heartedly

The measures planned by the French government to fight the budget deficit, such as raising taxes for the rich, major companies or on drinks are nothing but a sham, writes the business paper Les Echos: "The plan will work as long as growth continues. But in fact this is just scraping the bottom of the barrel. Like just before a budget is presented, when the bureaucrats scrape together a couple of hundred million here and there to arrive at a reasonable deficit figure. The tax hike on cigarettes and alcohol is typical of such last-minute scrambling. This isn't a political decision, it's a technocratic one.The true decisions are put off until after the presidential elections."

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