Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdm_blackhole | Hacker News Reader

France is in a dire situation right now.

10y OAT are at 4.5% and rising with almost 100bps difference with Germany and no budget for 2027 since there is no majority in the parliament.

There is also a 6% deficit expected and growth has been revised down to 0.4% although during the first 6 months of 2026 there was actually a decrease of 0.2% of GDP in total so finishing the year in recession is totally possible.

Unemployment could also reach around 9% (15% in real terms if you count the people who have given up and/or been removed from the stats since they ran out of benefits).

Finally gasoline could reach 3 euros/liter (USD $13 per gallon) before the end of the year (already sitting at 2.5 euros/liter in many parts of France right now).

View on HN

> and no budget for 2027 since there is no majority in the parliament.

The French government can pass laws without a vote in the parliament under Article 49.3 of the constitution. I think the last budget was adopted in this way.

It can try but it could also be toppled by doing so. Last year the government had something to trade with the socialists (postponing the increase of the retirement age) so without the support of the socialists, the motion to topple the government failed.

This year is different. Macron is on his way out and everyone wants to stay as far away as they can from him including his former prime ministers who are both running in the election.

That means that there is literally nothing they can offer to the opposition to avoid being toppled. If a parti were to agree to not topple the government on the 49.3 motion, they would be signing their own death warrant for the election.

And don't expect any debate on economic policy in the next presidential campaign either… It's just going to be “should we tax the billionaires” vs “should we save a few basis points of GDP in pensions”, none of which is remotely close to the order of magnitude that's needed to put the country back on its feet.

I am not expecting anything. I left France a long while ago and I am not planning on coming back anytime soon except for holidays.

> the order of magnitude that's needed to put the country back on its feet

The amount of reforms needed in France could fit in an encyclopedia. LFI or the RN will not fix this mess and the center who has been in power for 10 years is all but useless. The old center-left and center-right parties have all been in power also and led us to this place which means that are not the solution either.

Seems to me that France is well and truly stuck on a slow but certain decline. But the other EU countries are not doing much better either.

France doesn't need “reforms” though, quite the opposite.

France needs a project, and a project behind which the French population can rally. Because unpopular “reforms” carried on by centrists with a Thatcher envy is all we got over the past 25 years and that's what got us where we are now, with no growth and a decimated political landscape.

The said can be said about Germany and the UK as well, by the way.

It will be all about immigration and cost of life crisis. And of course the general finger pointing at the EU bogeyman

Indeed, and a bunch of culture war issues imported straight from the US by the people who pretends to care the most about French “identity”. But I was talking about the economy-related topics.

more social security will fix this I think? they need to spend 100Billion more on that so long term they can go into more debt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com