The Court of Accounts publishes its first report of the year devoted to the overall state of
public finances after two difficult years. For the second consecutive year, the public deficit worsened in 2024, reaching almost €175 billion, or 6.0 percentage points of GDP, after 5.5 points in 2023 and 4.7 points in 2022. Public debt has now reached almost €3.3 trillion and interest charges have reached €59 billion. This is an exceptional and unprecedented deterioration, even though economic growth remained continuously positive during this period. While the low increase in taxes partly explained the underperformance in 2023, it is, on the contrary, the growth in spending that is at issue in 2024, mainly on the part of local authorities and in social welfare. France, the only country in Europe to see its public finances continue to deteriorate, has obtained from its partners an extension of the deadline for reducing its deficit to below 3% of GDP from 2027 to 2029: after two false starts, the year 2025 is now crucial for initiating the necessary budgetary adjustment that the Court calculates at €110 billion, more than double the amount calculated in the summer of 2023 before the deterioration that has characterised recent months.
