GDP growth in 2026 expected “around 0.3%” rather than 0.4%, declares the governor of the Banque de France

Towards lower-than-expected GDP growth. “We will rather be around 0.3% over the whole of 2026,” declared the governor of the Banque de France Emmanuel Moulin this Tuesday on BFM Business. It was previously anticipated at 0.4% by the institution.

But this figure “was based on an assumption of positive growth in the third quarter. But we had −0.1%,” explained the governor. However, he assured that France could escape recession in the fourth quarter.

“We expect growth to be moderately positive in the fourth quarter,” he said. In its latest economic report, the Banque de France underlines that the situation is very uncertain and that there is a lack of visibility regarding the impact of social mobilizations, which add to a very complex geopolitical environment. Unemployment higher than our neighbors Although the governor of the Bank of France considers the unemployment rate of 8.2% in the third quarter as "rather good news", "the French unemployment rate remains higher than our European neighbors", he lamented.

For him, France still has progress to make to achieve full employment. Also invited to react to the 1.6% increase in the minimum wage, announced Monday November 9 by the government, Emmanuel Moulin declared: “The problem is that we have a lot of the population who are already on the minimum wage. So boosts to the minimum wage tend to tighten the salary scale and not allow increases in purchasing power for people a little above the minimum wage.

Machine-translated from French