Mr Edgar Faure Leads New French Government

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27593, 25 February 1955, Page 11

Mr Edgar Faure Leads New French Government

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) PARIS, February 23. By 369 votes to 210, Mr Edgar Faure, a Radical, was voted into office as France’s new Prime Minister last night.

He thus leads France’s twenty-first government since the end of the war. He was the fourth man to attempt to form a Cabinet after the fall of the Mendes-France regime. He has pledged his new Government to seek swift approval of the Paris treaties, which will arm Western Germany. The Faure Cabinet has been described as a “Centre Right’’ coalition.

When he put quick ratification of the Paris Aggreements at the top of his programme Mr Faure said the treaties were necessary to bring Germany into the community of Western Nations. “That is worth the sacrifice we are making,” he said.

His government would carry out the letter spirit of the Saar Agreements.

“Every man of good sense knows that in the present circumstances to try to negotiate without power, or to look for power without negotiation, are both attitudes which could produce the worst,” he said.

On the home front Mr Faure promised increased production, a 7 per cent, rise in the standard of living by the end of June, 1956, the wage increase promised by the last government, full employment more housing, and a fight against alcoholism. “The standards of life of the French people will be doubled during the early years of the next decade it the present rate of increase in production is maintained,” Mr Faure said. The former Prime Minister (Mr Mendes-France), contrary to convention, abstained from casting his vote tor his successor, according to a Radical Party spokesman Although Mr Mendes-France had appointed Mr Faure as Finance Minister and then Foreign Minister in the former Cabinet, some strain between the two men had been reported. Mr Faure’s investiture speech won only mild applause from a listless House, and only minor politicians took part in the debate which followed it. Mr Faure’s Cabinet list comprises Radicals, Popular Republicans. Conservatives. de Gaullists, and dissident de Gaullists. A spare-time thriller writer, Mr Faure has been a Cabinet Minister 10 times, and he was Prime Minister for five weeks in 1952. The New Cabinet Mr Faure’s cabinet list comprised: Foreign Minister. Mr Antlone Pinay (Conservative). National Defence: General Pierre Koenig (de Gaullist). Minister attached to the Premier’s Office: Mr Gaston Palewski (de Gaullist). Finance: Mr Pierre Pflimlin (Popular Republican). Public Works: General Edouard Cornlglion-Molinier (de Gaullist).