Photos of France's portly finance minister rowing a tiny boat on holiday circulated social media on Thursday - emblematic of a French economic ship for which, under the current government, prosperity is always beyond the horizon. "Look, he's not sinking. Everything must be fine," read one sarcastic Twitter comment after Michel Sapin became the latest minister to push the prospect of sound state finances and a healthy economy ever further into the future.
France on Thursday slashed its growth forecasts for both 2014 and 2015 and said it would miss its public deficit target this year after data showed the economy stuck at zero growth for the second straight quarter. During his 2012 election campaign, President Francois Hollande proclaimed: "I will bring public finances back into balance, respecting our undertaking to have a deficit of not more than 3 percent of GDP in 2013."
Taking power in May that year, Hollande built his economic promise on an assumption that growth would be 1.7 percent in 2013, 2 percent this year, then an average of 2 to 2.5 percent a year until 2017 - at which point the state budget would be in balance. By the autumn of 2012, the five-year balanced budget promise had already gone. The 2013 growth forecast was also halved to 0.8 percent.