In a statement issued after Sarkozy held emergency talks with senior ministers on the 2011 budget, the government said it would eliminate 10 billion euros in tax breaks and pledged to avoid unpopular increases in income, value-added and corporate taxes.   Sarkozy, whose popularity is near record lows ahead of an election in 2012, convened the talks with Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Economy Minister Christine Lagarde just days after Moody’s ratings agency warned that France — and several other top-rated nations — was inching closer to losing its AAA rating.

Sarkozy’s conservative government has told Brussels it will reduce its deficit from around 8 percent of GDP this year to 3 percent by 2013 — implying some 100 billion euros in savings. It has yet to detail where much of those savings will come from.

“The president said that cutting the public deficit to 6 percent of GDP by 2011, whatever the level of economic growth, is the main objective of the country,” said the statement from the Elysee presidential palace.

“Reducing the deficit must be achieved by cutting public spending as a priority. Neither income tax, VAT or corporate tax will be increased.”

The government said France would meet or exceed its 1.4 percent target for growth this year, after the economy accelerated to a better than expected 0.6 percent in the second quarter. However, economists expect expansion to cool off in the second half as stimulus measures expire.

The reduction in France’s 2011 growth forecast, previously 2.5 percent, came just a day after the Bundesbank raised its 2011 growth forecast for Germany to 3 percent from 2 percent, underscoring the divergence of the euro zone’s top economies.

“The underlying pace of recovery is very different in Germany,” said Gilles Moec, an economist at Deutsche Bank. “We should continue to see out-performance by Germany in the second half of the year.”

Analysts had warned that France’s over-optimistic growth forecasts — it had been predicting 2.5 percent for 2011 and the following two years — was a major obstacle to drafting a credible deficit-cutting plan.

For every 0.1 percentage point that growth misses the government’s 2.5 percent growth forecast next year, France will have to find roughly 1 billion euros more to cover lost revenues.

“There may be some people who think 2 percent is still too high, given that we are likely to see a slowdown in growth in the second half of the year, not only France but in the broader euro zone,” said Nick Matthews, senior European economist at RBS in London, who forecasts French growth at 1.5 percent in 2011.  “It is achievable but many people will still think it’s too high,” he said.

On Tuesday, Moody’s said France and fellow AAA sovereigns the United States, Britain and Germany were still “well-positioned,” but cautioned that they faced challenges to improve anemic growth rates and make credible fiscal adjustments.