“The most likely is that the public debt will continue to increase” | EUROtoday

En March 2025, INSEE reported that France’s public debt had reached 113% of gross home product (GDP) on the finish of 2024, in comparison with 109.8% on the finish of 2023. This enhance in debt is worrying, as a result of the 12 months 2024 was not marked by a recession, nor even by significantly weak development in GDP (it elevated by 1.2% in quantity). It outcomes from an unprecedented deficit outdoors the disaster interval (5.8% of GDP).

In April 2025, Eurostat revealed the final authorities accounts of European Union nations for 2024. France’s public debt was the third largest within the European Union by its quantity as a proportion of GDP on the finish of 2024. Only Greece and Italy had a better debt, whereas this was the case for a number of different European nations earlier than the 2020 disaster (Spain, Portugal and Belgium in 2017). From 2017 to 2024, France’s public debt elevated by 14.4 factors as a proportion of GDP, whereas the common euro zone debt decreased by 0.5 factors.

The enhance in French public debt didn’t begin in 2017. It represented solely 20% of GDP in 1980 and, then, it went up a flight of stairs with every disaster with out actually coming down afterwards. The money owed of France and Germany remained very shut till the mid-2000s, then they diverged.

What’s new in the present day, aside from the deterioration of our state of affairs in comparison with that of different European nations, is the rise in rates of interest. From the mid-Nineteen Nineties till 2020, the common rate of interest on excellent public debt decreased, in order that in some years the curiosity burden fell whereas the debt elevated in euros. Since 2021, rates of interest have risen sharply.

Defense and atmosphere

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