France’s new Budget Minister, Laurent Saint-Martin, admitted on Wednesday 25 September that the French deficit for 2024 is likely to exceed 6% of the country’s GDP.
“The truth is that in 2024, the public deficit is likely to exceed 6% of GDP, according to the latest estimates available to us”, he said at a hearing of the Finance Committee of the French National Assembly (parliament).
At the beginning of September, the previous French government admitted that the French public deficit would be 5.6% of GDP in 2024 and 6.2% in 2025, whereas the target it had set itself for 2025 was a deficit of 4.1% of GDP.
In its spring economic forecasts, the European Commission predicted a public deficit for France of 5.3% this year and 5.0% next year (see EUROPE 13410/4).
This slippage in the public accounts has resulted in an increase in the servicing of the French public debt. On Thursday, for the first time since 2006, interest rates on French ten-year debt exceeded rates on Spanish debt of the same maturity, at 2.94% versus 2.93% respectively.
By mid-October, the French authorities are expected to present their multiannual budget plan to the European level, to be implemented from January 2025 in accordance with the revised Stability Pact (see EUROPE 13478/18). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)