{"id":508837,"date":"2025-10-18T07:14:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T07:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/508837\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T07:14:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T07:14:24","slug":"france-downgraded-by-sp-as-budget-uncertainty-remains-elevated-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/508837\/","title":{"rendered":"France downgraded by S&P as budget uncertainty \u2018remains elevated\u2019 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The freeze of the pensions law until the next presidential election in 2027 was significant concession<\/a>\u00a0to the Socialist Party. Retirement reform was\u00a0considered\u00a0a flagship achievement for French President Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n

“Uncertainty on public finances remains elevated<\/a> ahead of the 2027 presidential elections,” S&P said in its statement. “One example of this is the new government\u2019s decision<\/a> to suspend France\u2019s landmark pension reform, originally introduced into law in 2023,” it said.<\/p>\n

S&P projects France’s economic growth will be 0.7 percent this year, and forecasts a “muted recovery” in 2026. <\/p>\n

“Additional risks to our growth forecast are considerable, particularly given the possibility of a pass-through of higher government borrowing costs into the cost of financing for the rest of the French economy,” the rating agency said.<\/p>\n

“While, in our view, the 2025 general government budget deficit target of 5.4 percent of GDP will be met, we believe that, in the absence of significant additional budget deficit-reducing measures<\/a>, the budgetary consolidation over our forecast horizon will be slower than previously expected,” S&P said<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Following the S&P downgrade, French Economy and Finance Minister Roland Lescure reaffirmed the 2025 deficit target<\/a> and said the draft 2026 budget submitted earlier this week should bring the budget shortfall down to 4.7 percent of GDP<\/a> next year. <\/p>\n

But that will still mean an increase in France’s government debt, which S&P expects to reach 121 percent of GDP<\/a> in 2028, compared with 112 percent at the end of last year, the rating agency said.<\/p>\n

Giorgio Leali contributed reporting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The freeze of the pensions law until the next presidential election in 2027 was significant concession\u00a0to the Socialist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[1194,2825,33,34,2000,299,36,24402,38,5111,617,12338],"class_list":{"0":"post-508837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-french-political-crisis","16":"tag-french-politics","17":"tag-parliament","18":"tag-pensions","19":"tag-sebastien-lecornu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115393938761304340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}