France’s public debt hit a record 2 trillion euros (2.5 billion dollars) in the second quarter of 2014, rising by more than a percentage point in a year to 95.1 per cent of gross domestic product, national statistics agency INSEE said Tuesday.
The debt burden of the eurozone’s second-largest economy stood at 2.023 trillion euros at the end of June, an increase of 28.7 billion euros in three months, INSEE said.
The French government had forecast the debt to only reach 95.1 per cent of GDP at the end of 2014, not by mid-year.
Under European Union rules, eurozone members are supposed to keep their public debt within 60 per cent of GDP and the budget deficit within 3 per cent of GDP.
But several countries, particularly in southern Europe, have strayed far off target.
France recently announced that it needed two more years to get its budget deficit within 3 per cent of GDP – an announcement that was received coolly in Brussels.
GNA
