Is France Really Reliving 2008 with 117.5% Debt to GDP and 4.7% Interest Rates?

The figure was released Thursday afternoon, and it stings. France's 30-year borrowing rate has crossed the 4.7% mark, a level not seen since mid-October 2008, during the height of the global financial storm. At that time, the world was picking up the pieces from Lehman Brothers. Today, no bank is collapsing. The problem is more intimate: it is the French public finances themselves that the markets are eyeing with suspicion, just months ahead of a heated debate on the 2027 budget.

Key points of this article:

• France has recently seen its 30-year borrowing rate reach 4.7%, an unprecedented level since 2008, revealing a growing distrust from the markets towards its public debt.
• As the debate on the 2027 budget promises to be tense, the significance of French debt, which stands at 117.5% of GDP, raises questions about long-term confidence in government bonds compared to alternative assets like Bitcoin.

4.7%: The Rate of Distrust

The facts first. On Thursday, July 16, the yield on the 30-year OAT (the assimilable Treasury bond, the instrument through which the French state borrows on the markets) rose to 4.735%, as reported by BFM Bourse that same day. And this Friday morning, the rate remains above 4.7%. An eighteen-year high. Just that.

Certainly, long-term rates are rising across Europe, amid war in the Middle East and soaring oil prices. However, France is bearing the brunt more than others. Alexandre Baradez, head of market analysis at IG France, remarked on Thursday that French rates are "particularly poorly positioned" in this general movement.

The proof is in the spread (the yield gap between French and German 10-year bonds, a thermometer of relative confidence): it reached 83 basis points in early July. This is reminiscent of the months following the dissolution of 2024. The atmosphere is tense.

2027 Budget: The Autumn of All Dangers

Why this distrust? Because the bill is known and it is dizzying. The French public debt reached 117.5% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026, amounting to over 3.5 trillion euros, and alarming reports are piling up on the Finance Minister's desk. The one from Clément Beaune, High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning, published Thursday, calls for a correction of 4.4 percentage points of GDP by 2031 to avoid "an uncontrolled drift of debt".

And the timing does not help. The debate on the 2027 budget opens in the autumn, during the presidential pre-campaign, with Marine Le Pen legally allowed to run. Investors are doing their math: who will bear the budgetary effort when each camp is already promising the opposite? No one knows. Hence the risk premium.

Bitcoin: The Asset That Doesn’t Need a Treasury Bailout

This is where the crypto reader rubs their hands, or at least raises an eyebrow. When the signature of a Eurozone state costs 4.7% over thirty years, the thesis of an asset without an issuer, without a deficit, and with a capped supply stops being a forum whim and becomes a serious topic of conversation. Bitcoin does not depend on any painfully voted budget, nor on any debt trajectory to patch up. Its 21 million units are etched in code, not in an amendable finance law.

Let’s be honest: the king of cryptos is not playing the hero this week, trading around $64,000, down, buffeted by the same headwinds (oil, U.S. monetary policy) as the rest of the markets. Bitcoin is not a nuclear shelter. But the question posed by France's abyssal debt remains: in the face of states that borrow ever more expensively to repay ever more, where to place long-term trust? The heavy-handed remedies suggested by the OECD to save French finances give an idea of the scale of the task ahead.

The next chapter will unfold in the autumn, between a fragmented Parliament, a France Treasury agency that will have to continue borrowing at all costs, and markets that now hold the reins. If today’s 4.7% becomes tomorrow’s floor, the debate will no longer be about the relevance of alternative assets. It will be about their dosage.

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