From 57.8% to 115.6% of GDP between 1995 and 2025: French public debt doubled. Interest pushed it up by 73.9 points, and nominal GDP growth held it back by almost as much; what remains, in this accounting decomposition, is primary deficits, excluding interest: 50.5 points of a net rise of 57.7, or 88%.
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Updated: 3 October 2026 France, general government, Eurostat series from 1995 to 2025. Download: CSV · JSON · method
France is a telling case for a question every indebted country faces. Its debt ratio doubled in thirty years, and Eurostat’s harmonised series allow that rise to be split, year by year, into the terms of a standard accounting identity. The accounting identity is general; the estimates below are for France.
The result in one sentence. Over thirty years, the net effect of interest and nominal GDP growth is small (+1.2 points), but it adds up two opposite periods, +16.9 points before 2017 and −15.7 since: the rise in the debt comes mostly from primary deficits, 50.5 points out of 57.7. This is an accounting decomposition: it identifies which accounting components contributed to the increase, not why the deficits existed.
What moves the debt-to-GDP ratio from one year to the next
Exact identity: dt − dt−1 = (i − g) / (1 + g) × dt−1 − primary balancet + stock-flowt, where d is the debt-to-GDP ratio, i the implicit interest rate (the year's interest / debt at the end of the previous year) and g nominal GDP growth.
Three periods stand out, and the dominant term changes from one to the next.
1996-2007: the interest-growth effect. The ratio gains +7.7 points. The implicit interest rate on the debt then exceeds, on average, nominal growth: the interest-growth effect adds +7.5 points, while the primary balance, close to equilibrium and sometimes in surplus, contributes −2.1.
2008-2019: primary deficits. The ratio gains +32.7 points, of which +26.9 come from primary deficits and +6.1 from the interest-growth effect. The year 2009 alone accounts for 14.2 points: the primary deficit widens and GDP contracts, two effects that coincide with the financial crisis.
2020-2025: nominal growth holds back, deficits push. The ratio gains +17.4 points. In 2020 it jumps by 16.7 points, with the pandemic. From 2021 to 2023, strong nominal GDP growth, driven in particular by inflation, brings the ratio down: the interest-growth effect takes 16.8 points off the ratio, more than primary deficits add (11.5). Since 2024 it has been rising again.
Over the 30 years of the series, the primary balance was in surplus only 4 times. This count describes a recurrence; it does not say whether each of these deficits was desirable, avoidable or cyclical.
Measured here. The annual decomposition of the French ratio from 1995 to 2025, on Eurostat series, checked against the published ratios. None of the texts read decomposes this window with this source: the measurement is validated by reproduction, not by citation.
Consistent with. Over 1970-2023, using INSEE accounts and a historical database, Auclert, Philippon and Ragot find that primary deficits and stock-flow adjustments account for 88 points of a rise of nearly 90 (from 21% to 110% of GDP), and a “snowball” effect close to zero on average: the same identity, another period, another source, and a primary deficit that includes the adjustments this page isolates. Clavères, at the French Treasury, finds the same sequence of signs: the effective interest rate moves above nominal growth in the course of the 1980s, and growth moves back above it from 2016. The OFCE (Heyer, Plane, Ragot, Sampognaro and Timbeau) links to deficits a rise in debt of 53 points in France from 2000 to 2024, against 44 in Spain, 27 in Italy and 5 in Germany, without decomposing these rises. The French Treasury describes debt rising almost continuously since 2001, with deficit reductions in favourable periods only stabilising the ratio, and a deficit that stayed above the stabilising balance until 2019. It describes 2001-2007 as “relative stability”; the page’s series nonetheless records a rise from 59.3% to 65.5% of GDP, and the OFCE estimates that nearly half of the deficit gap with the euro area had formed before the 2007-2008 crisis.
Challenged by. Any reading of the near-cancellation of interest and growth as neutrality. The match depends on the starting point, to within about ten points (Auclert, Philippon and Ragot), and the gap between interest and growth changed sign during the period (Clavères). This page’s data confirm it: the interest-growth effect weighed +16.9 points before 2017, −15.7 since. The CAE note, for its part, interprets this accounting finding as the direct result of budgetary choices (“our debt is the direct consequence of our budgetary choices”), while judging the share of crises hard to estimate; an OFCE estimate, cited by the note, puts it at about half of the rise since 2007.
Not established. Which of spending or revenue widened the recent deficits: the answers depend first on the period and the aggregate observed. The OFCE, which puts forward a more gradual adjustment path, starts the recent period at the 2017 presidential election and attributes most of the deterioration of the structural balance to an unfunded fall in compulsory levies, which declined by 2.5 points of GDP from 2017 to 2024; over that period, total spending stays stable as a share of GDP and primary spending falls slightly as a share of potential GDP. The French Treasury, for which consolidation “could go first” through cutting spending, starts from 2019, the situation before the pandemic, and notes that several spending items (interest charge, social security, central and local government) contributed to the 2.7-point deterioration of the balance up to 2025, while noting that reforms durably reduced revenue. On Eurostat’s series too, the breakdown changes with the window: from 2017 to 2024, the fall in total revenue dominates (−3.1 points, spending excluding interest −0.9); from 2019 to 2025, the rise in spending excluding interest dominates (+1.2, total revenue −0.9). The starting year is not the whole story: from 2017 to 2019, spending excluding interest had changed by −2.1 points, but from 2019 to 2024 total revenue changes by −1.8, against −0.9 up to 2025. Over this common window, the OFCE and the French Treasury converge on one fact: public spending rose less in France than in the euro area (1.8 points against 2.6 for the one, 1.6 against 2.4 for the other); Eurostat’s series find the same direction and order of magnitude (spending +1.7 points, total revenue −1.8). They do not, however, then analyse the same object: the OFCE explains the gap between France and the euro area, which it links mainly to revenue, while the French Treasury breaks down the deterioration of the French balance over 2019-2025. The accounting diagnosis therefore depends strongly on the period, the comparison and the aggregate chosen; and Eurostat’s total revenue is not the OFCE’s compulsory levies. These findings do not settle, causally, between spending and revenue. The causes, finally: the CAE note attributes the recent deterioration to the pandemic, the energy price shields and unfunded tax cuts, the French Treasury to the crises and the support measures, but none of the six texts provides a causal decomposition of the primary deficits observed from 1995 to 2025.
References read
Literature review checked on 3 October 2026: every reference cited was read in full on that date, in the version indicated.
In thirty years, French public debt doubled as a share of GDP, from 57.8% to 115.6%. Interest pushed it up, but over the whole period nominal GDP growth erased almost as much; what remains, in the Eurostat decomposition used here, is primary deficits, 88% of the rise: excluding interest, the public accounts were in surplus in only 4 years out of 30.
This near-cancellation is an offset over time, not neutrality. Before 2017, the implicit interest rate usually exceeded nominal growth, and the interest-growth effect added +16.9 points to the ratio; since then, nominal growth has prevailed every year except 2020, when GDP fell, and the effect has weighed −15.7 points.
In 2025, the offset closed: the implicit rate (2.02%) and nominal growth (2.0%) were almost equal. As long as they stay so, growth erases only what interest costs, and the direction of the ratio is set by the primary balance, give or take stock-flow adjustments: a primary deficit pushes it up by as much, a surplus pulls it down by as much. The implicit rate, for its part, has been rising from its low point as old debt is refinanced on new terms: if it moves back above growth, the same deficit will weigh more.
What the accounts do not say remains: why these deficits existed, and which of their two terms, spending or revenue, explains them. What it took elsewhere for debt to come down is the subject of Can public debt come down?
Over 1995-2025, the debt-to-GDP ratio went from 57.8% to 115.6%. Decomposing its change year by year, interest pushed it up by 73.9 points and nominal GDP growth held it back by 72.8: their net effect is only +1.2 points. The rise comes mostly from primary deficits, the gap between public spending and revenue excluding interest (50.5 points), and for the rest from stock-flow adjustments (+6.0). This is an accounting decomposition: it identifies which accounting components contributed to the increase, not why the deficits existed.
All else equal, yes: it adds to the borrowing requirement. But over thirty years nominal GDP growth almost offset it: its accounting contribution is 73.9 points, against 72.8 points of reduction due to nominal growth. That balance depends on the gap between the implicit interest rate on the debt and nominal growth: in 2025 the two were almost equal (2.02% and 2.0%).
It can reduce the ratio, by increasing nominal GDP faster than the interest bill. From 2021 to 2023, nominal growth — inflation included — produced an interest-growth effect of −16.8 points, while primary deficits added 11.5; this decomposition does not separate the share of inflation from that of real growth. This is not costless: it reduces the real value of nominal claims, and that loss is borne by someone.
Not necessarily: it is a gap between spending and revenue excluding interest, which can come from rising spending, falling revenue, or a recession that does both at once. These data measure the gap; they do not say which of its two terms should be corrected.
In the public debt dossier
Eurostat, general government (S.13), national accounts ESA 2010, in national currency: Maastricht debt (gov_10dd_edpt1), interest paid (gov_10a_main, D41PAY), net lending or borrowing (B9), nominal GDP as published with the deficit and debt notification (gov_10dd_edpt1, B1GQ). The primary balance is the general government balance plus interest paid. Each year, the identity is applied as written above; stock-flow adjustments are the residual. The script then compares, year by year, the debt ratio and the primary balance it computes with those Eurostat publishes as a percentage of GDP, and stops beyond a gap of 0.11 point. No figure on this page is entered by hand: all come from the same script, re-run with each release of the sources, which checks the main quantitative statements and stops if their conditions are no longer met; their wording is reviewed editorially.
The method behind this decomposition (the identity, the benchmark formed by the ratios Eurostat publishes, and the error it rejected) and its reconciliation with three public readings of the same debt (the 2014 citizens’ audit, the iFRAP Foundation, the French Court of Audit) are set out in the working paper AWP-09 — What Public Accounts Can Establish about the Displacement of the Public Debt Burden (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23145963, open-access PDF).
The charts, the data and a ready-made citation, under an open licence. Each chart carries its source, vintage and reading caveat inside the image: reused in a lecture or an article, it does not come apart from what makes it readable.
Over the period, interest and nominal growth almost cancelled out; the rise in the debt is mostly due to primary deficits, excluding interest.
Reading caveat. Accounting decomposition of the change in the ratio, not a causal attribution; the terms partly offset each other.
Eurostat gov_10dd_edpt1 (debt), gov_10a_main (B9, D41PAY), notification GDP, France, 1996-2025
Year by year, what pushed the ratio up or held it back; in 2021-2023, nominal growth brought it down despite the deficits.
Reading caveat. Points of GDP per year; the three bars add up to the change (black dot), to within a hundredth.
Eurostat gov_10dd_edpt1, gov_10a_main (B9, D41PAY), France, 1996-2025
Lalut, Stéphane (2026). “Why does French public debt rise?”. Eurostat data, retrieved October 3, 2026. https://stephane-lalut.com/en/why-does-public-debt-rise/
The annual decomposition of the change in the debt-to-GDP ratio, France, with its four terms, the implicit interest rate and nominal growth; the same content is available as CSV, one row per year.
Data and charts CC BY 4.0 — free reuse, including commercial, with attribution. Text under copyright — short quotation free, full reproduction on request. The raw series belong to their producers (Eurostat), under their own terms.
