French president orders new Cabinet as government resigns

French President Francois Hollande dissolved the government and ordered the creation of a new Cabinet in the second resignation of the French government following one in March

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls presented the resignation of his government to President Francois Hollande on Monday.

epistoli-paratisis-gallia

A statement released by the French president’s office said that a new government would be formed on Tuesday in line with the “direction (the president) has defined for our country.”

The resignation comes a day after leftist French Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg called for a new economic direction, questioning Germany’s budgetary policies. In an interview with Le Monde, Montebourg had said that the “priority must be exiting crisis and the dogmatic reduction of deficits should come second.” He was critical of Germany stataing that the country “is caught in the trap of austerity that it is imposing across Europe.”

Other French ministers joined in this criticism, calling for changes to Hollande’s tax and spending cuts plan over the weekend and attacked austerity policies in the euro area.

It should be noted that Valls’s government was only in place for five months and the previous government, with Jean-Marc Ayrault at the helm, was dismantled in March after the disastrous performance for the French Socialist Party in France’s local elections. Noteworthy is the fact that France has had no economic growth this year causing Hollande’s approval ratings to plummet.

The crisis comes just days after Hollande and Valls insisted that the government would not veer from its course of budget cuts.