The future is starting to darken for the eurozone economy in the medium term. The budgetary efforts that several Member States will have to make will have significant consequences for the growth of the monetary union as a whole, at a time when challenges such as the fight against global warming, the ageing of the population and the need to invest in defence to face external threats are multiplying. The United States, moreover, is currently taking on debt by leaps and bounds to maintain its global leadership, ahead of China.
“If we consider that a country’s budgetary situation is worrying when its public debt ratio is already high and when, in order to stabilize it, it will have to make a significant adjustment to its public accounts in the coming years, then three eurozone member states meet this definition: Italy, France and Belgium,” says Charles-Henri Colombier, economist at Rexecode. In a recent study, economists from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predict that Italy’s public debt will reach 144% of GDP in 2029 – surpassing Greece -, that of France, 115% – twice that of Germany – as well as that of Belgium.
