Historian, research director at the CNRS and attached to the Historical Research Center of the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences where she is one of the leaders of the Economic History Group, Laure Quennouëlle-Corre is a specialist in financial and monetary issues. She traces in her work Debt Denial (Flammarion, 368 pages, 21 euros) the very specific construction of the relationship of the French with their State, between demand for protection and suspicion of ineffectiveness, at the cost of a more or less camouflaged and more or less conscious consensus on progression constant public debt.
The announcement, by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, on March 26, of an exceeding in 2023 of the threshold of 3,000 billion euros of public debt (110.26% of gross domestic product – GDP ) has it created a shock that would make it possible to reverse what you call “debt denial”?
The subject of public debt comes up regularly in the French political debate, on various occasions offered by current events: at the time of the Treaty of Maastricht [1992]during the debate on the “kitty” of a supposed budget surplus [1999], during the 2007 presidential campaign, or when a rating agency “downgrades” France’s signature. Then the blow subsides and we don’t talk about it again until the next opportunity. The debt, or the way to remedy it, has never been at the center of a political program, the issue of an electoral campaign, and a fortiori of an election. The Court of Auditors was this time again a “whistleblower”, but that is its usual role. If there is a shock, it is within the public authorities and a restricted community, which fears that these bad figures will reinforce external pressure, from Brussels as well as from the financial markets.
But is it precisely a “problem”, when we see that France has not had a balanced budget since 1975, without serious economic consequences, that all developed countries have comparable debt levels, that French Treasury bond issues are subscribed several times at still very low rates?
Yes, it’s a problem, because France faces a wall of investments to finance the energy transition, national (and European) security in the face of authoritarian states, artificial intelligence technologies, etc. However, it no longer has any room for maneuver, due to the accumulation of previous deficits, the rise in rates, and the monetary union which deprives it of the weapon of devaluation. Our debt has become structural due to past deficits.
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