Nearly all French ministries will be forced to limit their spending in 2027 as the government seeks to reduce the high budget deficit. This was reported by the newspaper Les Echos.

Total budget expenditures in 2027 are expected to increase by about €20 billion in absolute terms, reaching €417 billion excluding pension contributions for civil servants. However, this increase is almost entirely absorbed by a significant rise in debt servicing costs (+€12.3 billion) and additional funds allocated to defense (+€6.4 billion), the publication notes. Thus, the increase for the remaining ministries will be very modest and will mainly go toward projects in ecology, as well as security and regional administration.

The other departments will have to cut their spending even more than in 2026, with the Labor Ministry’s budget seeing the largest reduction (-€1.9 billion). In other ministries, the constraints will be far less severe; however, for example, the budget for research and higher education, which is increasing by €500 million, “in fact only keeps pace with inflation,” the publication states.

The Ministry of National Education, which has the largest budget of all departments, will receive €65 billion in 2027, but the increase compared with the previous year will even be below the inflation rate. At the same time, as the newspaper writes, the authorities are not giving a direct answer to questions about whether this will lead to class closures in schools in the next academic year.

As for local authorities, the government plans to ask them, as it did last year, to streamline their spending. It is expected that it will be frozen at €339 billion, corresponding to the 2026 level.

At the end of June, the National Institute of Statistics, Insee, reported that France’s public debt had exceeded €3.5 trillion, amounting to 117.5% of the republic’s GDP. At the same time, the debt is growing faster than the French economy, and with it the amount of interest the government must pay each year is also rising. According to forecasts, debt servicing will cost France €59 billion in 2026 and €77 billion in 2028.