France’s 10-year government bond yield touched 5.002 percent on Wednesday, a 24 year high, and was last up about 8 basis points on the day at just below 5 percent, Reuters reported. The premium investors demand to hold French bonds over benchmark 10-year German Bunds stood at around 157 basis points, nearing levels last seen in 2011, in the euro area debt crisis.
The move is fiscal, not monetary. Government bond yields have risen around the world this year as higher energy prices prompted central banks to raise rates, Reuters noted, but France’s borrowing costs have risen more than most peers because developed market governments are also carrying much larger debt piles and France’s ability to restore its finances is in doubt. A weakened government is trying to get a budget through parliament and bring down a high deficit, and uncertainty ahead of a contested election next year and widespread protests across France are also hurting its markets.
Eurostat put the stock behind the flow the same morning: French general government debt stood at 119.1 percent of GDP at the end of the second quarter of 2026, the third highest in the European Union, and the euro area deficit was 3.0 percent of GDP in 2025. France’s own budget process, covered by this site on Tuesday, has the revenue side of the 2027 budget contested in parliament while the government of Prime Minister Lecornu operates without a stable majority.
At 5 percent, the 10-year yield is no longer a market curiosity. It is the rate against which French mortgages, corporate bonds and the state’s own refinancing are priced, and a spread near 157 basis points over Bunds prices France closer to the euro area periphery of 2011 than to the core. The next test is mechanical: whether the budget votes reduce the deficit path markets can see, or whether the spread becomes the story that forces the politics.