00:00France's Social Security budget cleared a key hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday as MPs narrowly approved a draft bill aimed at staving off a huge gap in funding for welfare, pensions and health care.
00:16A total of 247 MPs voted in favour of the text and 234 voted against, while 93 abstained. The vote by lawmakers in the lower house handed a victory to embattled Prime Minister Sébastien Léconneau.
00:34Léconneau was saved by making last-minute concessions that included suspending President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform to secure the vote of the centre-left Socialist Party,
00:45alienating the Conservative Republican Party and its own centrist alliance.
00:50The government had warned MPs that if the Social Security budget for next year were to be rejected, public finances could quickly deteriorate.
00:59France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, is under pressure to cut its budget deficit.
01:06But efforts have been armstrong by a fragmented parliament, the result of snap elections President Macron called last year.
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