France: The Staggering Figures of the State's Burden

While Spain, Portugal and Italy are pulling out of their massive public deficits — Italy's public deficit has been cut from 8% of GDP in 2022 to 3.4% in 2024 — France continues to sink and is now Europe's sick man. The "Club Med" countries, which we once looked down on, have now overtaken us.

France is on the podium for public deficit (5.8% of GDP, no. 1 in the EU), public spending (57.1% of GDP, no. 2), public revenue (51.3% of GDP, no. 3) and public debt (113.0% of GDP, no. 3), according to the website Fipeco.

And so: expenditure (57.1%) - revenue (51.3%) = deficit (5.8%).

Just to clarify: we're talking here about "public revenues" (51.3% of GDP), which include compulsory levies (taxes, social security contributions, levies in the strict sense of the term) plus "non-compulsory revenues", which are:

• Dividends from companies in which the government holds a stake (Banque de France, Airbus, Engie, Safran, Thales, FDJ, Renault, Orange, etc.);
• Charges for use of the public domain: levies imposed by local authorities on companies or individuals using the public domain for commercial activities, such as gas, electricity, telecom and water networks, café terraces, etc.
• Income from the sale of services by public authorities: 1/5 of national GDP, valued by cost, as there is no market price, essentially for government services (army, police, judicial system), national education, care provided in public hospitals, as specified by INSEE. A highly artificial increase in GDP...

In 2024, compulsory deductions amounted to 42.8% of GDP, and public revenues to 51.3% of GDP, making a total of around 10% of GDP in "non-compulsory revenues", which nonetheless constitute a state drain on the economy, since it sets the conditions and rates. Added to this is the accounting artifice of determining the value produced on the basis of costs, without regard to quality or real demand (for example, parents prefer to send their children to private schools, but by a kind of tacit law, these cannot exceed 20% of enrollment). In short, the French moloch-state collects and spends a little over half of the wealth created by the French, while at the same time swelling the debt... Let's be astonished that we're sinking.

And it's all going to get worse. The IMF anticipates a worsening of the French deficit (6.1% of GDP instead of the 3.4% forecast for 2028). The international organization does not believe in the government's efforts. Indeed, in the absence of any structural reforms, it's hard to see how things could improve. Bercy is now scraping the bottom of the barrel: the idea of a tax on second-hand books has even been mooted. No laughing matter.

These catastrophic figures — and perhaps above all the widening gap with countries that were once in worse shape than we are — could well lead to a French debt crisis. Fasten your seatbelts!