France’s economy minister Roland Lescure has said that growth this year would be half what the government assumed when it wrote the budget, and that the public deficit would finish above 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
At a press conference on September 11, Lescure cut the official 2026 forecast from 1 per cent at the start of the year, and from 0.7 per cent in July, to 0.5 per cent. It was the third downgrade this year, after a first cut to 0.9 per cent in April.
The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) had already put the figure at 0.4 per cent on September 10 and called France the only large advanced economy expected to slow this year.
Lescure blamed higher energy prices after the Strait of Hormuz crisis, weaker investment and a summer of heat and drought that he said would take about 0.1 point off GDP through agriculture.
Inflation is put at 2.1 per cent this year and 1.8 per cent in 2027.
The 2026 budget had aimed for a deficit of 4.7 per cent, then 5 per cent, after 5.1 per cent in 2025.
“Five per cent is no longer an option,” Lescure said. “We will have a deficit above 5 per cent.”
Public accounts minister David Amiel said on Sud Radio that another €500 million of spending had been cancelled that morning and that ministries would have to find more. He said the cuts would fund crisis aid, notably for farmers hit by the summer’s heatwaves and drought, for whom the government announced a €1 billion emergency plan in early September.
Lescure told reporters there was “no fat left” and that a 2027 budget had to be passed before the end of this year. He still expects growth of 1 per cent in 2027, assuming shipping through the Strait of Hormuz returns to near-normal in the coming months.
The draft 2027 budget is due before the National Assembly on September 30, according to the JDD.
The downgrade lands on a presidency whose economic record the public already rejects.
According to a CSA poll for CNews, Europe 1 and the JDD, 66 per cent of French people consider the economic record of President Emmanuel Macron’s two terms as “bad”. A further 28 per cent said it was “average” and 5 per cent said it was “good”.
Discontent is particularly pronounced among those aged 50 and over (74 per cent) and the economically inactive (73 per cent), while it is less pronounced among those under 35 (52 per cent).
An Elabe survey for Les Echos published on September 3 had confidence in the president at 20 per cent, down four points.
Unemployment, which fell in the first half of his time in office, is back above 8 per cent. Insee put it at 8.3 per cent in the second quarter, the highest level since 2020, and expects 8.6 per cent by the end of the year.
Public debt is more than €3.5 trillion, or around 117 per cent of GDP.
Some plans of the opposition to fight the debt also landed badly.
Speaking to RTL on the morning of September 11, Banque de France governor Emmanuel Moulin criticised France Unbowed (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s proposal to cancel the 18 per cent of French government debt held on the central bank’s books. Moulin took office in June after serving as Macron’s secretary-general at the Élysée.
Mélenchon, who is running for president in 2027, has described the proposal as effectively “throwing [the debt] on the fire”. It would involve writing off around €500 billion in government debt, according to Moulin, who said the bank held about €488 billion on June 30. Mélenchon has put the figure at €636 billion.
Moulin called the idea “illegal, dangerous and useless” and said the plan would breach European Union treaties and effectively amount to a sovereign default. France has not defaulted on its debt since 1797, he said.
He warned that the consequences would extend well beyond the €500 billion being erased from the government’s books. The write-off would leave the central bank facing a corresponding €500 billion hole, while damaging confidence in French debt and potentially pushing up both inflation and borrowing costs.
“The euro area is a co-ownership,” Moulin said. “If you do not pay the charges, the other owners tell you to leave.”
The European Central Bank has taken a similarly hard line. ECB President Christine Lagarde on September 10 described writing off government debt held by the central bank as a “pure violation of the treaty”.
The same day, the ECB raised its deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.5 per cent, its second hike since the conflict in Iran pushed up energy prices across the eurozone.
Mélenchon has rejected the criticism, though, accusing Moulin on X of entering the presidential campaign to back “the fibs of his political friends”. LFI national co-ordinator Manuel Bompard accused the governor of spreading false information.
Moulin stopped short of comparing France’s current situation with the sovereign debt crisis that engulfed Greece. France, he said, was “not in danger” in the Greek sense, describing its economy as “more solid and diversified”.
But he warned that the country’s position was nevertheless “worrying”, pointing to weak economic growth and low inflation at a time when several of France’s European neighbours are moving in the opposite direction.
France’s public debt reached a new record high of €3,460.5 billion at the end of 2025. https://t.co/X0ABemovK1
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) March 27, 2026
