France's excessive debt pile is "life-threatening" for the country, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Monday as he defended billions of euros of budget cuts ahead of a confidence vote expected to bring down his government.

Defending his decision to call a vote he is widely expected to lose, Bayrou added: "The biggest risk was not to take one, to let things continue without anything changing... and have business as usual".

"France did not have a balanced budget for 51 years," he added, saying his government had put forward a plan so that France could "in a few years time escape the inexorable tide of debt that is submerging it".

"You have the power to overthrow the government" but not "to erase reality," Bayrou told the MPs, who are expected to eject his minority administration in a vo

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