Macron to address joint Parliament session on July 3

French President Emmanuel Macron will speak before a joint session of Parliament at Versailles on Monday to present his recipe for the eurozone second largest power for next five years, an official said.

"The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron has ... confirmed to me that he will convene the Congress in Versailles on Monday 3/07," Senate president Gerard Larcher tweeted on Wednesday.

The due meeting of the French Congress, a joint sitting of lawmakers and senators, comes on the eve of Prime Minister Edourad Philippe's address to the National Assembly to shed light on the centrist government's economic and social roadmap, Xinhua news agency reported.

Pro-liberal market Macron, a former investment banker, pledged more flexibility to companies, further reduce French high employment charges to incite recruitment and bring down unemployment to 7 per cent by 2022 from 9.7 per cent currently.

Furthermore, he promised to cut public expenditure by 60 billion euros ($68.22 billion) in order to stick to France's commitments to bring down budget deficit to the eurozone threshold of 3 per cent.

He would also reduce corporate tax to 25 per cent from the current 33.3 per cent and to slash public sector headcount by 120,000 over the next term.

Macron promised to boost the defence budget, hire 10,000 police officers and raise funding for schools.

Speaking about governance, he planned to cut number of lawmakers by a third in both the Senate and National Assembly and to ban hiring of family-members as assistants of lawmakers.

--IANS

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