Très difficile

François Hollande is nothing if not a traditionalist. French governments of the left usually come to office promising to reject austerity and pursue a holy grail of growth, only to hit the buffers of economic reality on election. In 1936, the Popular Front sought to overturn the orthodoxy of its predecessors after the Great Slump and in 1981 François Mitterrand pledged to escape from Giscard d’Estaing’s rigorous policies in reaction to the first oil shock. After being appointed as the country’s latest finance minister this summer, Pierre Moscovici duly declared that ‘austerity’ was a word he did not like. But austerity is, nonetheless, what the new president has been forced into, though what exactly it will mean remains open to some questions with major importance for France in the coming years.

This week, the French government delivered what it called the most austere budget in 30 years. Hollande is seeking to meet targets David Cameron would find quite unwork-able: reducing government overspend to 3 per cent of economic output by next year.