Plagued by a gaping hole in its finances and expensive election promises, the French government is preparing to publish a 2003 budget bill with no hope of trimming its deficit from levels close to European limits.
Newspapers this morning have reported what voters and financial markets expected to hear officially during the day, that there would be modest tax cuts and the deficit would stay at 2.6 per cent of national income, or gross domestic product.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was clearly happy to see the European Commission announce on the eve of the budget that a deadline for eliminating deficits across the European Union was being postponed by two years to 2006.
The Commission said France and Germany were actually in danger of hitting the three per cent ceiling of the EU Stability Pact, a binding deal designed to underpin the euro and encourage the European Central Bank (ECB) to keep interest rates low.
Raffarin was content that his first annual budget bill since taking power in June would at least no longer be totally at odds with the norm set for all euro zone countries in terms of ambitions for deficit elimination in the years to come.
"We welcome the Commission's decision to set a new date for budget balance," Raffarin told reporters. "We sign up to this timeframe and the finance minister will present forecasts that are compatible with the Commission's wishes," he added.
By default, he himself implied that Paris had already given up all hope of meeting the initial target of 2004 with a budget that was drawn up and signed before the Commission announcement.
Paris looked glad to have avoided what might look like a clash and officials stressed that the budget was reasonable.
"We had to get out of the 2004 deadline without sparking a crisis," one official close to Raffarin said.
"We made it clear to Brussels that this did not mean we were letting the budget dam break, that we were serious on spending (restraint) and that budget balance remained the goal but that we could not do it in 2004," the official said.
"It's also important that the ECB sees it this way," the source said.