Does France really want to reduce its fiscal deficit?

The French government keeps repeating that its objective is to eliminate France’s structural fiscal deficit by 2022. But when we take into account: Realistic growth prospects (factoring in the labour market situation and potential growth); The measures to increase public spending and cut taxes that have been announced; The government’s commitment not to increase taxes; we see that the required effort to r educe public spending in France to bring the fiscal deficit down to the announced level by 2022 is considerable: around four percentage points of GDP. The French government confirms that it wants to press ahead with these government spending cuts, but: They would lead to a considerable contraction in demand, if they actually involve spending cuts; If they are obtained by transferring certain public services to the private sector, the political acceptability of these transfers is questionable; It would have been simpler to change the parameters of the pension system again, but that has been ruled out. We can therefore legitimately question whether French public finances really will return to equilibrium by 2022 and what would be the consequences if a significant fiscal deficit persisted until then .