what the public debt and its interest actually represent

The ax has fallen. French public debt reached 3,228.4 billion euros in the second quarter of 2024, according to the latest figures from INSEE published this Friday. The country’s public debt, which has increased massively since the health crisis, therefore increased by nearly 69 billion euros between March and June to reach 112% of GDP, compared to 110.7% at the end of the first quarter. An increase certainly expected but no less spectacular.

Because this inexorable rise continues to bring the French debt to levels that are increasingly difficult to understand. Compared to the 68,373,433 French people on January 1, 2024, including children, this represents some 47,217 euros per head. Or 107,255 euros per active person, according to 2021 figures. That is no less than 7,835 Airbus A380s owned by Saudi Prince Al-Walid, the most expensive private plane in the world, estimated at more than 400 million euros. Or 6056 times the budget of the most expensive film in history, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakensat 533 million euros, according to Forbes. Even more impressive, the total French debt would make it possible to build nearly 169 EPRs in Flamanville, the cost of which is estimated at 19.1 billion euros by the Court of Auditors.

Also read“Debt, deficit: France, straight into the wall”

An ever heavier load

However, the increase in debt is mechanically accompanied by an increase in the debt burden. Which, with 7.3 billion euros, was already the State’s largest expenditure item last July, as revealed by the latest monthly situation of the State available. Last year, the “State financial commitments” were in second place behind education (82 billion euros), with some 62.4 billion euros spent in 2023, including 53.9 billion euros for “Debt burden and state treasury”. Far ahead of Defense, and its budget of 54.8 billion euros in 2023.

Worse. According to the stability program left by the Attal government, the debt burden should reach “around 80 billion in 2027, almost as much as the national education budget”already warned the governor of the Bank of France in April. Enough to alert the new Minister of the Budget who sounded the alarm this Wednesday. “The situation of our public finances is serious, and I will not beat around the bush: in 2024, the public deficit risks exceeding 6% of GDP” ccompared to 5.1% initially expected, he announced before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly.

And the same governor of the Bank of France returned to the charge last Wednesday on the Télématin set: “The French disease is that we have been accumulating too much deficit and too much debt for too long, and this situation can no longer continue. The debt is becoming more and more expensive, expenses inherited from the past prevent us from financing future expenses.” Before comparing France to “a family [vivant] beyond its means and unable to make ends meet [n’arrivant[pasàbouclersonbudget». In total, over the six full years (2018-2023) of Macronian power, the public debt increased by 839 billion euros.