Question 3
In 2025, the State, social security and local governments spent €1,714 billion, that is 57.2% of what the country produced in the year. It is one of the highest figures in the world. Before saying whether it is too high, it helps to know what it contains: what is passed on and what is produced, who pays and who receives, and why it exceeds the neighbours’.
Item by item
Out of €100 of public spending in 2024, here is where the money goes, and how much of it was borrowed. Tap a line for details.
Pensions and health alone account for €39.07 out of 100. Interest on the debt (€3.52) already weighs more than defence (€3.24).
Public spending
France · 2024 · per €100
Pensions, sickness and disability, families, unemployment, housing benefits, fighting poverty. About €693 billion in 2024.
of which old age (mostly pensions)€23.45
Hospitals, doctors’ visits, reimbursed medicines. About €261 billion in 2024.
Running the institutions, development aid, interest on the debt. About €181 billion in 2024.
of which interest on the debt€3.52
Transport, energy, farming, support for businesses and jobs. About €166 billion in 2024.
Schools and universities. About €149 billion in 2024.
Armed forces and military equipment. About €54 billion in 2024.
Police, courts, prisons, fire services. About €52 billion in 2024.
Sport, culture, public broadcasting. About €43 billion in 2024.
Housing, water supply, street lighting, development. About €42 billion in 2024.
Waste, sewage, pollution control, biodiversity. About €30 billion in 2024.
Total€100.00
Paid by revenue (taxes, contributions…)€89.89
Borrowed€10.11
Passed on or produced?
Spending does not always mean consuming. A pension, a benefit or a reimbursed doctor’s visit is money collected and handed back to a household, which spends it itself. National accounts separate that money from the money used to produce services, schools, hospitals, police, roads, that is wages, purchases and investment.
The 22 “produced” points are what administrations do themselves: 12.4 points of wages, 5.4 of purchases, 4.4 of investment. That is the part that looks like what people call “public services”. The rest includes 2.2 points of interest on the debt and 1.9 of subsidies to companies.
Source: Eurostat, government expenditure by economic nature, 2025.
Since when?
The rise came in two stages: 12 points between 1960 and 1980, as pensions and health insurance became universal, then 11 points up to the 2013 peak. Since then spending has hovered around 55%, with a spike to 62% in 2020. Revenue followed the same slope, slightly below: the gap between the two curves is the deficit.
Source: INSEE, national accounts, 2020 base. 2025 provisional.
Who pays, who receives
Social contributions, levied on wages, are the first public resource. Retirement is by far the first expense. People in work pay in, retirees receive: that is not an anomaly, it is how pay-as-you-go works. It is also why, at thirty-five, one can feel like paying a lot and getting little. What one receives comes later.
Health (8.9% of GDP) is counted separately in the functional accounts; it too goes mostly to older people.
Source: Eurostat, revenue by type of levy and expenditure by function (COFOG).
And the neighbours?
In the Netherlands, health insurance is private but compulsory. In the United States it goes through the employer. In both cases the money does not appear in public accounts. The OECD recomputes what each country devotes to social protection once private schemes and taxes clawed back on benefits are counted: the gap with France narrows a lot.
| Public social spending | Once private schemes and taxes are counted | |
|---|---|---|
| France | 30.7% | 30.1% |
| Italy | 27.7% | 24.4% |
| Germany | 25.6% | 25.4% |
| Sweden | 25.1% | 23.4% |
| Spain | 24.6% | 23.2% |
| OECD average | 20.1% | 20.2% |
| United Kingdom | 19.3% | 23.2% |
| United States | 18.5% | 29.8% |
| Netherlands | 16.3% | 25.3% |
| Switzerland | 16.1% | 24.1% |
% of GDP, 2019. Source: OECD, Society at a Glance 2024, SOCX database.
France devotes 13.4% of GDP to public pensions, against 9.9% in Germany, 6.1% in the Netherlands and 10.7% on average in the Union. Three choices explain it: an almost entirely public system, a lower retirement age, a higher pension relative to the last wage. Each can be debated; none is mismanagement.
Is it well spent?
The question applies item by item, and the two largest, pensions and health, are societal choices before they are management questions. For the rest, here is what the figures allow one to say.
12.4% of GDP in 2025, against 8.6% in Germany, 9.0% in Italy and 10.3% on average in the Union; only Sweden is at the same level (12.5%). This measures how many staff there are and what they cost, not what they produce: France counts its hospitals and teachers in that figure, which other countries employ differently.
5.1% of GDP, against 4.5% in Germany, 5.1% in the Netherlands and 4.7% in the Union. The difference is not in the amount; it would lie in the split between primary, secondary and higher education, and in results, which this site does not measure.
34,875 communes, 1,254 intercommunalities, 101 departments and 18 regions on 1 January 2025, each with its own administration and overlapping powers. The Cour des comptes returns to it every year in its report on local finances.
Quality. One euro more or less in a school or a police station does not show up in national accounts. Spending comparisons say how much; they do not say how well.
Further reading
This site does not rule. It notes that “too much spending” and “badly spent” are two different charges, that the first mostly concerns collective choices and the second a smaller share of the total, and that the figures above let one raise either without confusing them.