Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday vowed to cut taxes and social charges on salaries to stimulate the sluggish French economy. In a speech to the annual conference of the national syndicate of entrepreneurs MEDEF, Sarkozy said, "I want to go farther in lowering our obligatory (wage) deductions. I want to go farther in fiscal reforms."
Sarkozy also said he wanted to farther relax the 35-hour workweek imposed by the Socialist government of former prime minister Lionel Jospin, in order to "provide more flexibility to wage policies."
In a speech that was short of specific proposals, Sarkozy also criticized statistics that suggested that the imposition of the euro had not led to a jump in consumer prices.
"To say that the euro did not raise prices is to make a laughing- stock of everyone," he said. "I don't want the French to be made a laughing-stock by price indexes that mean nothing, which do not measure the cost of living, which have no relation with the reality experienced by households."
Sarkozy said that he intended to keep his campaign promise of reducing the number of civil service employees by replacing only one of two civil servants who retire.
