French Socialists in deregulation row

The government’s plans for structural reform provoked a rebuke from the Socialists’ left wing.

A row has broken out within France’s ruling Socialist Party about the government’s economic policy. On Sunday (19 October), Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille, launched a stinging attack on the policies of President François Hollande and his prime minister, Manuel Valls, accusing them of putting the welfare of businesses above that of ordinary households.

Aubry, Hollande’s main intra-party rival in the 2011 campaign for president, criticised the government for focusing too much on business at the expense of households.

Aubry’s attack was triggered by an announcement from Emmanuel Macron, the economy minister, of a variety of measures to de-regulate France’s economy.

Some structural reform will be required to convince the European Commission to approve yet another delay in France meeting its budget-deficit targets. France submitted its 2015 draft budget for approval to the Commission on 15 October, together with other EU member states.

The row deepened on Tuesday, when two former cabinet ministers from the Socialists, Aurélie Filippetti and Benoît Hamon, abstained from the budget vote in the National Assembly, drawing angry denunciations from party officials and calls for them to be ejected.