French Prime Minister François Bayrou said 4,000 public teaching jobs would not be cut in the 2025 budget, reversing a plan by his predecessor Michel Barnier.
"It’s a way of saying ‘this is our priority’", Bayrou told LCI television on Monday, speaking about France's National Education system, adding that the decision to keep the 4,000 job postings was "definitive".
His remarks come just days ahead of Thursday's meeting of a joint committee, comprising lawmakers from both the lower and upper houses of parliament, tasked with reaching a compromise on the disputed budget.
"The country has no budget, no majority. If we let it go, the country will sink into division," Bayrou told the press on Monday. "My effort is to bring it all together."
Bayrou, who became France's fourth prime minister in a year and who survived a vote of no confidence on 16 January, faces a huge challenge to get agreement on a long-overdue budget plan for 2025.
Like his predecessor Michel Barnier, who lasted just three months before being deposed in a no-confidence vote, Bayrou lacks a majority in the National Assembly and could be dispatched just as easily if he fails to win at least tacit backing from enough opposition deputies.
A sustainable budget plan for this year is the priority for Bayrou after Barnier's austerity budget was jettisoned along with his government in December.
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Bayrou has been negotiating with the various blocs, with the far-right and most of the left rejecting deep spending cuts.
Reducing the number of teaching jobs was a red line for Socialists, who threatened to support another vote of no confidence if the cuts were implemented.
Continuing on the theme of education, Bayrou also told LCI that he wished to see a more "progressive" method used in schools to improve handwriting.
"I believe we must do writing at school, every day and in all classes, not just in French" he declared, adding that images had taken over when it came to young people.
A former Education Minister (1993-1997) and a classical literature graduate, Bayrou said it was a shame handwriting was on the decline.
He said he would encourage "writing in the physical sense of the term. Forming the letters. All this has completely disappeared," he said.
(with newswires)
