France's new economy minister suggests scrapping 35 hour working week rules

Laurent Berger, head of France’s CFDT trade union, has said that Mr Macron has “made a mistake” and that scrapping the rules “is out of the question. The subject is closed.”

The 35 hour working week rules have been in place since 2000, and have attracted strong international criticism.

David Cameron slammed the measures in 2012, when he said that the law resulted in “your [French] businesses become more expensive to run than anybody else’s, you lose out to the competition and you have less jobs in the economy”.

This morning, analysts at Barclays said that Mr Macron’s appointment “sends a strong signal” about the direction French policy.

He is expected to speed up the country’s reform process, and to put an end to any confusion over which direction the regime is headed.

Mr Macron spoke to Le Point last week, when he would not have known that about his upcoming promotion.

Etienne Gernelle, managing editor of Le Point, told French news channel LCI that Mr Macron was “speaking freely”.

Mr Macron, a former investment banker who spent four years with Rothschild bank, was appointed to his new role on Tuesday.

He is considered a centrist hire by French standards, despite being a Socialist Party member.

Mr Macron replaced a hard left predecessor, Arnaud Montebourg, as economy minister, after internal divisions saw President Francois Hollande purge the cabinet of left-wingers.

The position of Mr Montebourg became untenable after he slammed the government’s austerity policies as “catastrophic”.

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