France Must Keep Up Efforts to Reduce Debt, Le Maire Says

(Bloomberg) -- French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire reaffirmed that France needs to reduce spending and cut debt to show it is a serious, reliable player to global investors and partners.

The country must maintain its efforts, Le Maire told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an interview ahead of this weekend’s Group of Seven summit in France published on Sunday.

“We must continue to lower public spending and reduce our debt,” he said.

The minister added that historically low interest rates were not a reason not to do anything about deficits. “We would be at the mercy of a rise in rates,” he said.

France’s budget deficit totaled 77.3 billion euros ($86.1 billion) in June. The country’s national auditor said in the same month that France continued to stand out among European partners by having higher nominal and structural deficits, and a slower rate of improvement in its public finances. It added that the government’s measures designed to respond to the Yellow Vest protests had derailed efforts to repair finances.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Regan in Paris at jregan65@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Geraldine Amiel at gamiel@bloomberg.net, James Ludden

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