French goverment resigns

25082014

French goverment resigns amid rancor over German austerity pressure

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls presented the resignation of his government to the president on Monday, media  reported. Francois Hollande’s office said a new government would be formed on Tuesday in line with the direction the president “has defined for our country.” The resignation comes a day after leftist Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg called for new economic policies and questioned Germany’s “obsession” with budgetary rigor.

France’s government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls has resigned on as  after senior ministers slammed President Francois Hollande’s plans for taxation and spending cuts,  called for alternative ways to Germany-led austerity to exit the crisis.

The statement published Monday said the new office would be formed on Tuesday and would be in the “direction he (the president) has defined for our country.”

The announcement comes after the country’s Economic Minister Arnaud Montebourg and Education Minister Benoît Hamon criticized Hollande’s economic policy, calling to shift the focus form the deficit-reduction measures.

“The priority must be exiting crisis and the dogmatic reduction of deficits should come second,” Mr. Montebourg said in an interview with Le Monde published ahead of the annual Fête de la Rose meeting of Socialist Party activists at Frangy-en-Bresse in eastern France.

Montebourg also said it was time to resist Germany’s “obsession” with austerity and work out some alternative ways to promote household consumption.

“You have to raise your voice. Germany is trapped in an austerity policy that it imposed across Europe,” the Socialist minister said in the interview.

“France is the eurozone’s second-biggest economy, the world’s fifth-greatest power, and it does not intend to align itself, ladies and gentlemen, with the excessive obsessions of Germany’s conservatives,”Montebourg added.The Ministers reminded that the economic weakness was causing political extremism and could turn into recession. Media agencies