Le quotidien qui Mark

President reveals grand spending plan to safeguard 'cultural heritage' and turn higher education institutions into best in world
Nicolas Sarkozy today unveiled a €35bn (£31bn) spending plan aimed at preparing France for the "challenges" of the future, vowing to save its cultural heritage and turn its struggling universities into the best in the world.

Flying in the face of calls for the state to tighten its belt, the French president announced the "big loan" - which will see the government borrow €22bn for a series of large investments, ranging from green technology to higher education.

It was billed by Sarkozy as an ambitious plan to give the country a kick-start into the next decade "so that France can fully profit from the recovery, so that it is stronger, more competitive and creates more jobs", he told ministers and journalists in a speech at the Elysée palace.

The opposition Socialists, although not questioning the need for more spending in certain key areas, criticised the scheme. With a budget deficit already the highest of any country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), they said, France should be careful about "adding to uncontrolled debt".

Sarkozy said the project would be part funded by €13bn in loans made to banks at the peak of the financial crisis and since repaid. He said targeted investments now would help France achieve long-term excellence.

The sluggish and underfunded higher education sector – set to take €11bn of the package – is the centrepiece of the plan, researched by two former prime ministers, Michel Rocard and Alain Juppé.

The scheme envisages €8bn going to create 10 campuses, bringing together leading institutions. One campus, to the south-west of Paris at Saclay, would become a hotspot for science and technology, Sarkozy said. "Our aim is quite simple: we want the best universities in the world." But critics said the plan, instead of closing the gap between elite establishments and neglected universities, would reinforce the existing two-tier system.

The cultural sector was another winner. Out of a wider technology package worth €4.5bn, €750m will be earmarked to ensure that France's national treasures will be digitalised.

Sarkozy warned last week that he would not let France be "stripped" of its culture by the US giant Google's plan to scan books for publication in its online library. "This too is a question of identity," he added, in a reference to his ongoing efforts to discover France's inner self.

Sarkozy pointed out that France was among the countries to have emerged best from the crisis, but despite praise from his own right-wing UMP party the plans were criticised. The spending programme puts him at odds with both the EU and the OECD, which have urged countries to rein in spending after months bailing out financial institutions.

"Economists are saying – and they are right – that the loans of today are the taxes of tomorrow," said François Hollande, a Socialist MP and former party head. "So the big loan will be the big tax."