President Sarkozy has laid out plans to end France’s leisurely lifestyle through a series of financial incentives designed to encourage workers to spend longer at the office.

A month after being elected, Mr Sarkozy has moved to implement his campaign pledge to abandon taxes and social charges on overtime. The measure is included in a raft of legislation that will also involve the creation of mortgage interest and inheritance tax deductions as well as a crackdown on golden parachutes.

It comes ahead of legislative elections on June 10 and 17 that will give Mr Sarkozy’s centre-right supporters a comfortable parliamentary majority, according to the polls. But critics said that the package would cost at least €12 billion (£8.15 billion), fuel the French deficit and do little to stimulate growth.

Doubts over Mr Sarkozy’s policies appeared to hit his own government when the Prime Minister, François Fillon, said that the overtime tax breaks would cost €2 billion to €3 billion a year only to revise the figure to €5 billion to €6 billion hours later.

The measure — a key plank of Mr Sarkozy’s campaign programme — is designed to attack the 35-hour legal maximum working week introduced by the Socialist Government in 2000.

“Les 35 heures” has encouraged long weekends throughout the year as Friday afternoons have become a time of rest for many French workers.

But the President says that the reduction in working time has undermined productivity, growth and wages. Under his “Work, Employment, and Spending Power” Bill, that will go before Parliament next month, hours over the 35 limit will not be subject to social charges or income tax.

The social charge rate in France is fixed at 21.5 per cent and income tax rates vary from 5.5 per cent for those earning over €5,614 a year to 40 per cent for those whose earnings exceed €66,679 a year.

Mr Sarkozy will also oblige all employers to pay overtime at 25 per cent more than the standard hourly rate. At present, this rate applies only to companies with at least 20 employees. Smaller firms pay 10 per cent more.

A worker in a small company on the minimum wage who puts in an extra four hours a week will see his pay packet rise by €60 a month, according to economists.

The centre-right Government said that it will encourage businesses to resort to overtime through a reduction in employer social charges of between €0.50 and €1.50 an hour.

Mr Fillon, who is leading the legislative election campaign, said: “We believe that more working hours means more growth, and therefore more wealth. This measure is destined to respond to two principal problems of French society: insufficient purchasing power and shortage of hours worked.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former Socialist Finance Minister, said: “This measure will be extremely costly at a time when we have problems with the budget deficit.”

Long history of long hours

—More than 600 million workers worldwide are working “excessively” long hours, a study from the International Labour Organisation has found

—The United Nations agency said that 614 million people, equal to more than one in five workers, continue to work more than 48 hours a week despite guidelines against such long hours that are nearly a century old

—The study said that shorter hours would benefit workers’ health and family lives, reduce accidents, boost productivity and improve equality between the sexes

—It also found that many workers putting in few hours are underemployed and at the risk of falling into poverty. Jon Messenger, a co-author of the report, said its findings were “definitely worrying” (Gabriel Rozenberg)

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