France will take urgent steps to rein in a spiralling deficit, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said on Thursday, warning voters they would have to tighten their belts in support of the next generation and the country's standing in Europe, reports The New York Times.
Heeding a call from the public audit office for action, Philippe said his government would come up with savings rather than tax hikes to plug the more than 8 billion euro shortfall.
"As I speak, our debt rises every second. We can't do that to our children. They shouldn't be the ones paying for this," he said in a rare televised address by a serving prime minister.
"Under the president's authority, the government will put an end to the continuous spiralling increases in our deficits," said the former conservative mayor appointed by Emmanuel Macron last month.
Elected in May on pledges to reform the economy, the president faces a first major test to find the extra savings deemed necessary by the Cour des Comptes audit office, after the last government overspent in its final months.
Unless cuts are made, the public sector deficit will reach 3.2 percent of economic output this year, exceeding the previous Socialist-led government's 2.8 percent target.
"This situation requires a big effort to keep spending in control," Cour des Comptes head Didier Migaud told journalists, urging the new government to break with its predecessor's habit of under-budgeting expenditures.