French Prime Minister François Bayrou proposed axing two public holidays as part of €44 billion in cuts in order to bridge the country’s gaping budget deficit.
Though the additional working days garnered attention abroad, playing into clichés about French labor culture, Bayrou also wants to freeze increases to benefits and pensions, raise taxes on the wealthy, and reduce health care subsidies — a combination described by Le Monde as “bitter potion.”
The cuts speak to the scale of the fiscal crisis facing France, which has the widest deficit in the eurozone, but they may be politically costly: Nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, whose party tops opinion polls, threatened to oust Bayrou’s minority government with a no-confidence motion unless he backs down.
