The country is being hit by a pre-election debt sell-off. Many fear it could shake the Eurozone. France’s debt has reached €3.5tn, at nearly 120 per cent of GDP, far above the Eurozone average. Servicing costs the state’s single biggest expenditure ahead of education or defence. The additional interest rate that France pays to borrow over ultra-safe German debt has surged to around 1.4 percentage points on 10-year debt. In the worst-case scenario, some think the European Central Bank could be forced to come to the rescue. That could come at the cost of demanding structural reforms, such as slashing pension spending, which the French public has long rejected. Financial Times 6 October 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/9b252b46-a87c-45e7-a09a-45a39ce077b8?syn-25a6b1a6=1 In Europe, the shadows of the 2011-12 crisis are emerging again. Lorenzo Bini Smaghi Financial Times 5 October 2026 The writer is a former member of the executive board of the European Central Bank and former chair of...
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