France is to face fierce spending cuts and some €20 billion of new taxes on businesses and the wealthy when its fragile new government unveils an austerity budget today to head off looming fiscal disaster.
Michel Barnier, who leads a conservative-centrist coalition in semi-opposition to President Macron, has promised to halt a slide into profligacy that is shaking confidence in the eurozone’s second-largest economy and has raised its borrowing costs close to those of Greece and Italy.
France’s biggest tightening of fiscal policy since President Sarkozy’s budgets after the 2007-2008 financial crisis effectively ends Macron’s seven-year push to help businesses with tax cuts and liberal reform. The president, who appointed Barnier and his minority government after an inconclusive snap election in July, has distanced