Former PM warns of "inevitable" financial crisis in France

Former French prime minister François Bayrou has issued a stark warning that the country is heading for an unprecedented crisis, a looming financial meltdown combined with the risk of a “mortal” second-round presidential contest between Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI).

In an interview on Europe 1 on August 12, 2026, Bayrou said next year’s entire take from income tax would not even cover the interest payments on France’s debt, let alone the capital, Caliber.Az reports, citing Brussels Signal.

“Next year, the totality of income tax paid by the French will not suffice to pay the totality of the interest on the debt. Not the capital, simply the interest,” he said.

He described a situation without parallel in living memory and one that leaves the nation vulnerable to external creditors. “Never in three quarters of a century has France been in the situation in which it finds itself,” he told the broadcaster.

Bayrou drew a comparison with the aftermath of the Second World War, when France carried debts of a similar order. But at that point, he argued, it had growth and the option of devaluation, tools no longer available inside the euro.

“The financial crisis is inevitable,” he warned.

Bayrou ruled himself out of the 2027 race in June 2026, when he published Alerte sur la France qui vient, a book on the state of the public finances.

He is instead pushing for a broad primary stretching from the Socialists to the Gaullists to select a single candidate capable of blocking what he called the extremes.

He wants that candidate designated by February and has praised former European commissioner Thierry

“For many of us, in any case for me, neither LFI nor the RN are acceptable,” he said, accusing the RN of targeting immigrants and LFI of targeting the rich.

Without order, he said, France faces division, scapegoating and a loss of national resilience at a moment of European war on the doorstep and structural Western decline.

“We cannot take that risk, which is a mortal risk,” he said.

Bayrou closed the interview with an aviation image aimed at the field of declared candidates. “You do not hand a Boeing to someone who has never flown, including a glider,” he said, calling for a figure with both the experience to hold office and the capacity to embody renewal.

The presidential election is due in April 2027, roughly eight months away. Parliament returns in September to a budget for that year which the government must steer through a National Assembly with no majority, in the middle of the campaign.

By Vafa Guliyeva