Debt. Everyone only has this word to their mouths, while Prime Minister François Bayrou is at all costs to justify the 44 billion euros in savings planned for 2026. It must be said that the figures make you dizzy. According to INSEE, the latter amounts to 3,345.4 billion euros in the first quarter of 2025, or 113.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
A dantesque and… unpublished figure? Not really. Far from being a contemporary creation, public debt fluctuates for centuries, with peaks that sometimes (and far) exceed (and far) the current figures, as bad as they are.
Of the Middle Ages …
From the Middle Ages, the kings of France borrowed to finance the wars and establish their authority. Saint Louis was for example the first to heavily be in debt the state, to the point that some people call it “the king of debt”. And to reimburse it, the monarchs used techniques to say the least different compared to today. Philippe le Bel has, for example, deliberately persecuted the Jews and the Templars, main creditors, so as not to pay his debt, while playing on the incessant devaluations and re -evaluations, by capturing part of the metal in circulation by successive redesign.
However, it remains difficult to quantify public debt for long periods, due to the lack of encrypted data. On the eve of the French Revolution, in 1788, it was estimated, however, that it would have reached approximately 4 billion pounds, while state revenues capped at 500 million and the expenses exceeded 600 million. Verdict: this already represented more than 80% of the estimated GDP of the time.
Looking at the evolution of French debt since 1815, there are clearly two historical debt records: during the two world wars.
A figure lower than that of today, but which was much more felt on the economy: the debt service, the interests that the State pays each year, absorbed approximately half of the budget and the debt increased inexorablely.
Since then, public debt has undergone the effects of multiple crises: periods of political disorders, such as the revolution of 1848, to the immeasurable expenses induced by the great conflicts of the XIXe century, like the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871), which increased French public debt from 49% to 83% (as a percentage of GDP) between 1869 and 1873. A bitter forebirth of records reached after … the first and the Second World War.
… To the historic peaks of debt in the 20th century
Three researchers from the Avant-Garde Institute, a young French thinking group founded in 2023, observed the evolution of French public debt since 1815, based on various official data published by national statistics. And to look at the graph showing its evolution expressed as a percentage of GDP (set out again by the magazine Alternatives Economique and to be found below), there are clearly two historical debt records: during the two world wars of the first half of the XXe century.
Following the First World War, public debt exploded to exceed … 305% of GDP in 1919. A peak that the interwar period struggles to absorb, between national reconstruction and modernization, until the Second World War, where everything goes into a spin. From 117% of GDP in 1939 (almost like today), debt climbed to 319% in 1944. An absolute record in the history of the country.
The post-war period marks, fortunately, a period of debt reflux, favored by the strong growth of the Thirty Glorious Years. In 1974, French public debt represented only 17% of GDP, according to the avant-garde institute: the lowest level reached in contemporary history. Since then, everything has gone back into a spin … But gradually, this time.
Continuous progression, various crises and covid-19
Since 1974, a new scheme has become the rule: France has indeed recorded a public deficit each year and state expenditure systematically exceeds its revenues. Result, the debt climbs, climbs, climbs, exploding regularly in successive crises, from the second oil shock of 1979 to the European monetary system crisis of 1993, which caused a public deficit of 6.4%, without forgetting the 2008 subprimes crisis, with public deficits exceeding 7% of GDP in 2009 and 2010.
More recently, an event that you surely have not forgotten has led to a brutal increase in debt: the COVVI-19 health crisis. In 2020, to cope with the economic consequences of the pandemic, the State unlocks hundreds of billions of euros in support and support measures. As a result, the public deficit then reaches a record level of 8.9% of GDP and the debt crosses for the first time the symbolic bar of 100%. The rest, we know it: French public debt today peaks at 113.9% of GDP.
In all this economic and political slump, a new one slightly dispels the fog. The avant-garde institute, which has put in perspective for almost two centuries of debt, delay: the debt service remains both relatively stable and historically low, compared to other periods characterized by high debt. What put the assertion somewhat in parentheses that public debt in France has reached an unbearable stage.
