France faces calls to cancel €600 billion in public debt as fiscal pressure mounts

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran leftist firebrand running for France’s 2027 presidential election, wants to make €600 billion in public debt disappear. Not pay it off. Not restructure it. Cancel it outright. The target: bonds held by the Bank of France on behalf of the Eurosystem, accumulated during years of European Central Bank quantitative easing. Mélenchon argues those securities represent roughly 18% of France’s total public debt and that erasing them would free up fiscal space without hurting private creditors. The numbers behind the panic France’s public debt hit €3.536 trillion at the end of Q1 2026, equivalent to 117.5% of GDP. That’s an increase of €75.6 billion from the previous quarter alone. For context, France’s debt-to-GDP ratio sat at about 20% in 1980 and around 60% at the turn of the millennium. Interest payments on that mountain of obligations are projected to exceed €77 billion in 2026. France also needs to raise approximately €310 billion this year just to refinance maturing debt. Why officials are sounding the alarm Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Economy Minister Roland Lescure have not been subtle. Both have labeled the proposal a form of fraud, warning...