Debt and public spending, Bruno Retailleau
Handling of the debt: Primary surplus from 2030, debt falling after its 2030 peak
Direction of change: decrease, compared with current law.
The lever. What the programme plans for public debt: repayment, ring-fencing, buyback or cancellation by the central bank, restructuring. Direction rule: ↑ higher targeted debt; ↓: debt reduced.
« dès 2030 la France dégage un excédent hors intérêts de la dette, la dette atteint son point haut en 2030 puis recule »1Translation by the editorsfrom 2030 France runs a surplus excluding debt interest, debt peaks in 2030 then declines
Encoding
No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The programme 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 debt (Maastricht) at end-2025: €3,460.5bn, i.e. 115.6% of GDP. OFCE forecasts: 118.3% in 2026, 119.8% in 2027. General government interest charges: €64.7bn in 2025, i.e. 2.2% of GDP (OFCE: 2.4% in 2026, 2.6% in 2027). Average maturity of State debt: 8.5 years (April 2026).
Horizon. Not applicable in static costing; sensitivity given as a benchmark.
Limits. The « traitement » (treatment) of the debt (cancellation of securities held by the Banque de France, restructuring, ring-fencing, forced loan) is a matter of European law and market confidence: it is not costed statically. Sensitivity benchmark: +100 basis points across the whole yield curve add €3.1bn of interest charges in the 1st year, €7.5bn in the 2nd, €18.4bn in the 5th, €32.1bn in the 10th (negotiable State debt); +1 point of inflation adds €3.0bn (index-linked securities). To be used to assess the effect of a programme on the risk premium, separately from the central figure.
- Insee, Informations rapides n° 78, 2026-03-27: « dette publique ... 3 460,5 Md€ ... atteint 115,6 % du PIB fin 2025 ; charge d'intérêts 64,7 Md€ ... s'établit à 2,2 % du PIB »
- Fipeco, La charge d'intérêts de la dette publique, 2026-05-11: « une hausse au 1er janvier de 100 points de base de tous les taux d'intérêts ... entraînerait une augmentation de la charge d'intérêt ... de 3,1 Md€ la première année, de 7,5 Md€ la deuxième, de 18,4 Md€ la cinquième et de 32,1 Md€ la dixième »
- OFCE, Le déficit public devrait diminuer en 2026 et 2027, 2026-04: « la dette publique au sens de Maastricht devrait augmenter jusqu'à près de 118,3 % du PIB en 2026 »
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.
- avecretailleau.fr, mesure n° 117 « Réduire le déficit pour retrouver notre souveraineté – 146 Md€ ». Read the programme page.
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