Paris - The entire year of 2009 will be an economic crisis, with no date in sight for a recovery, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Tuesday.

"Today, no one can know when we will emerge from this crisis. What is known is that the entire year 2009 will be a year of crisis," Fillon told Europe 1 radio.

The French premier also admitted that the government's stimulus package would not prevent the crisis from taking hold in France.

Paris - Sales of new passenger cars in France as measured by auto registrations plunged by 13.1 per cent in February, the Committee of French Autmobile Producers (CCFA) announced on Monday.

The decline hit both domestic brands and foreign-made vehicles. Sales of Peugeot cars fell by nearly 20 per cent in February, while the struggling General Motors subsidiary Opel saw sales in France decline by 35 per cent.

Only the Korean brand Hyundai (up 3.9 per cent) and Italian manufacturer Fiat (plus 0.3 per cent) saw sales rise in February, the CCFA said.

Paris - The French government is prepared to admit officially that in 2009 the country will go through its worst recession since the end of the Second World War, the daily Le Figaro reported on Monday.

Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who had earlier minimized the effect of the global economic crisis on France, will on Wednesday report to the cabinet that France's GDP will contract by 1.5 per cent this year.

The French government's previous official forecast for 2009 predicted GDP growth of 0.2 to 0.5 per cent.

Beijing  - A Chinese bidder who bought two controversial bronze sculptures in a Paris auction now refuses to pay for the items, which China regards a looted art.

Five days after auction house Christie's spectacular sale of the art collection of late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge, where the two lots raised China's hackles, a Chinese man revealed he was the successful bidder, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Brussels  - France defied its critics and demanded European Union support for the bloc's crisis-stricken car industry at an EU summit in Brussels on Sunday, diplomatic sources said.

The call came a day after the EU's second-largest member backed down on a bail-out plan which would have obliged producers to give preferential treatment to French factories and suppliers.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy now wants the EU as a whole to take steps to keep the bloc's auto producers afloat, diplomatic sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.