France's central government slashed its budget deficit last year by a third thanks to the end of one-off spending measures, the budget ministry said today.
But state auditors said much tougher austerity measures were needed to hit EU targets.
The central government's 2011 shortfall came in at €90.8 billion, €4.5 billion better than forecast in last year's budget, meaning France should comfortably beat its overall state deficit target for last year of 5.7% of GDP.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said recently the overall public deficit - which includes social security and local authority spending - could have dipped as low as 5.3% of GDP last year, putting France well on track to meet this year's target of 4.5%.
Today's figures showed that, while revenues were flat last year, the central government was able to slash its deficit as spending tumbled by 14%.
Spending in 2010 had been boosted by a €32 billion one-off charge for a government future investment programme covering everything from industry to research and teaching, and an exceptional payment to regional governments to cover the cost of a reform to France's local business tax.
France's Court of Auditors - a quasi-judicial body charged with reviewing public finances - said in a report that the government last year had taken only one tenth of the measures required to keep its promise of balancing the public finances by 2016 and that much tougher steps would be needed.
"At this rate it would take 10 years to get to budgetary equilibrium," said Didier Migaud, first president of the Court of Auditors. "The biggest steps will remain to be taken in 2013 and 2014."
The Court of Auditors estimated that France had reduced its structural deficit - excluding cyclical economic effects - to 4.5% of GDP in 2011, down by just 0.5 of a percentage point from the previous year.
The court urged the government to slash €15 billion from the exemptions that litter France's complex tax code. President Sarkozy's government has pledged to cut its public deficit to 4.5% of GDP this year and to within an EU ceiling of 3% by 2013, but its task is being complicated by a slowdown in French growth.
The Bank of France said in its monthly report today that the economy would see zero growth in the first quarter as it succumbed to a slowdown across the crisis-hit euro zone.
France has one of the highest levels of public spending in Western Europe, due in part to its generous welfare system, running at around half of GDP.
