Budget 2026: “The supposedly unanimous “common sense” on debt is at the service of a real class policy”
Interview For sociologist Benjamin Lemoine, a debt specialist, if France's accounts are under pressure today, it is not because of "social laxity or unbridled public spending", "it is the result of decisions that have methodically impoverished the State".
Interview by Remi Noyon
Prime Minister François Bayrou presents the government's budget plans for 2026 on July 15, 2025, in Paris. JEANNE ACCORSINI/SIPA
Benjamin Lemoine is the author of important books on debt and how states finance themselves: "The Order of Debt" (2016) and "Democracy Disciplined by Debt" (2022). In these two books published by La Découverte, but also in his work on "vulture funds" , he shows how public debt is caught in a singular architecture that must be "denaturalized" . After the announcement of the draft budget for 2026 , we left him a message to ask what he thought about it.
"The moment of truth" is the name given by François Bayrou to the presentation of his deficit reduction plan on July 15. What do you think of this slogan?Benjamin Lemoine: The Prime Minister is a repeat offender when it comes to false pedagogy and bravado. Back in 2007, on France Télévisions, with the debt clock hovering over the horizon of campaign promises, he declared: "This co…
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