France is in for a long and hard bargaining period with its European partners over whether it should be granted an extension on meeting its budgetary targets set by Brussels. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Michel Sapin unveiled a 2015 budget that confirmed that France won't meet its 3.0% Maastricht deficit target until 2017 and showed that Paris was falling further being in cutting its so-called structural deficit. France's structural budget gap - which strips out the effects of the economic cycle from spending and revenue levels - will show an improvement of only 0.1 point this year and just 0.2 point in 2015. The ... (full story)