France is looking increasingly like a member of the eurozone periphery, says Wiwo.de. According to the country’s auditor, Cour des Comptes, France will have to make a “big effort” if it is to lower its budget deficit to 3% by the end of 2015. Brussels has already extended that deadline by two years. Due to the recession, there’s only “a small chance” of Paris reaching this year’s deficit target of 3.7%. The structural reforms required to boost growth and competitiveness have proceeded at a glacial pace.
The Socialist government has trimmed taxes for firms and made it marginally easier to fire staff. But “the sorry state of French politics could sink” the reforms, says Pierre Briançon on Breakingviews. The government was already under fire because a minister had a secret Swiss bank account.
Now it seems the previous centre-right administration handed €400m to a dodgy businessman. With far-right populists polling as strongly as the two main parties, the “feeling that ‘they’re all crooks’ is spreading. And voters are finding it harder to accept the sacrifice demanded by the same crooks in the name of the greater good of reforming the economy”.