Outgoing French PM hopeful for concessions to avoid snap elections

Sebastien Lecornu continues meetings with party leaders in effort to pass budget and avoid further political instability

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France's caretaker prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, has said his talks with various party leaders had revealed a willingness" to pass a budget by the end of the year and that snap parliamentary elections were now looking less likely.

This willingness creates a momentum and a convergence, obviously, which make the possibilities of a dissolution more remote," he said in a brief address on Wednesday from the courtyard of Matignon Palace, the prime minister's residence, in Paris.