Public debt: France will have to pay 100 billion euros in interest from 2028

Sébastien Lecornu's government may try to cut spending by freezing social assistance, making sick people pay and de-indexing retirement pensions, but the debt burden will continue to inexorably increase, pushing up public spending.

It should even exceed 100 billion euros by 2028, according to the report on the 2027 finance bill (PLF), tabled by Philippe Juvin, general budget rapporteur (Les Républicains) at the National Assembly. This amount of 100 billion hits, on the eve of the rating of France by the financial agency Moody's, watched by the markets.

“The public debt ratio of all public administrations should reach 119.3% of GDP at the end of 2026 and settle at 121.7% at the end of 2027, continuing its uninterrupted increase since 2024 and anchoring itself at a higher level than during the Covid-19 crisis,” notes the report of the Hauts-de-Seine MP. Between Emmanuel Macron's coming to power in 2017 and the end of his second term next year, "the debt ratio would increase by 23.2 points of GDP", with a stratospheric outstanding debt: 3,814.9 billion euros in 2027, an increase of 4.8% compared to 2026. In 2017, the country's public debt was "only" 2 218.4 billion euros.

“The risk of financial suffocation”

To repay such a sum, the State is forced to pay enormous interest to its creditors, which is also only increasing. In 2023, the debt burden already represented a staggering cost of 53.4 billion euros. In 2026, the bill would rise to 79.2 billion (social security and community deficit included), estimates the report, before reaching 91.2 billion euros in 2027 and 103.7 billion euros in 2028. That is, more than the National Education budget, forecast at 89.1 billion euros in 2027 (and 60.6 billion euros without the retirement).