French authorities faced further pressures to comply with this year's budget deficit targets and prepare estimates for next year's receipts following disappointing second-quarter growth figures released yesterday.

According to Insee, the official statistics agency, the economy grew only 0.5 per cent.

This was below the 0.8 per cent preliminary figure estimated by Insee in June, leading the agency to predict it would revise its forecast downwards for annualised growth to only 1.4 per cent.

Household spending which has underpinned growth for the past four years was a little stronger.

It was up 0.5 per cent against 0.3 per cent in the first quarter, and accounted for over half the increase in the GDP.

But investments fell back noticeably, dropping 0.5 per cent compared with the 0.4 per cent increase at the beginning of the year.