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PARIS — France’s new left-wing government started work on Thursday with pledges to combat excessive austerity but better manage public finances, marking the debut with a 30% cut in pay for President François Hollande and all ministers.

The sizeable wage reduction was endorsed at a first meeting of the 34-minister team, a day after Germany’s government awarded rises to its ministers and Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose pay will overtake Hollande’s.

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Pierre Moscovici, France’s newly-appointed finance minister, set the tone, reiterating Hollande’s demand Berlin and other euro zone capitals rework a fiscal pact agreed in March, to add pro-growth measures alongside commitments to deficit reduction.

“What we’ve said is the treaty will not be ratified as it stands,” Moscovici said. “We’re firm on this.”

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With a debt crisis again rumbling louder in the euro zone, the minister, a moderate social democrat like Hollande, went to lengths to say the European push did not mean the Socialists would renege on a pledge to balance the country’s books by 2017.