Déchiffrer 2027

FREN

Debt and public spending, Édouard Philippe

Public deficit targeted for 2032: Golden rule on deficits by referendum, deficit at 2% of GDP in 2032

Direction of change: decrease, compared with current law.

The lever. General government deficit that the programme targets at the end of the five-year term, as a percentage of gross domestic product. Direction rule: ↑ higher targeted deficit.

« Inscrire dans la Constitution une règle d'or de maîtrise des déficits via un référendum, et ramener le déficit de plus de 5% à 2% du PIB à la fin du quinquennat. »1

Translation by the editorsWrite into the Constitution a golden rule on deficit control via a referendum, and bring the deficit down from more than 5% to 2% of GDP by the end of the five-year term.

Words of Édouard Philippe, Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026), 14 October 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.

No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The cited source does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

lever that cannot be costed

Lever with no coefficient in the cost schedule: the position is compared, not costed.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Public deficit 2025: 5.1% of GDP (€152.5bn). 2026 target: 5.0%, maintained in the RAA 2026. Official path: « sous 3 % du PIB à horizon 2029 » [“below 3% of GDP by 2029”] (PSMT 2025-2029, adjustment spread over 7 years with the agreement of the Council of the EU). OFCE forecasts: 4.8% in 2026, 4.4% in 2027. No official target published for 2032.

Horizon. Level in 2032, as % of GDP, to be compared with the extended PSMT (medium-term fiscal-structural plan) path (below 3%).

Limits. Balance target, not a measure: it serves to compare the announced target with the total of costed measures. 1 point of GDP is worth about €36bn in 2032 (nominal growth assumption). It is not a cost lever as such: it is the targeted balance, which serves to test the consistency between costed measures and the announced target. The conversion into €bn in 2032 rests on a nominal GDP assumption: about €3,000bn in 2025 rising to €3,560bn to €3,680bn.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Édouard Philippe

  1. Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026), 14 October 2026. Words of Édouard Philippe. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026)).

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