The Banque de France denied on Saturday, September 13, that it had sold any French public debt on financial markets, after accusations from Éric Coquerel, a lawmaker with the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party who chairs the National Assembly's Finance Committee.
In a statement, the central bank said that following controversies and false information circulating on social media, it wished to provide clarification on its programme for holding public debt. The statement did not name Coquerel directly, though it came in response to accusations he had made against the institution and its governor, Emmanuel Moulin.
The dispute began the day before, when Moulin told French radio station RTL that a proposal by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon to cancel the portion of French debt held by the Banque de France would be an illegal, dangerous and useless measure.
Coquerel hit back in a video relayed the same day by the account of L'insoumission, an LFI-aligned platform. He said Moulin had shown he was not at all independent of political power, having waded into the election campaign in a highly partisan way.
Coquerel's figures on the debt stock
Coquerel pointed out that Moulin had put the French debt held by the Banque de France at 488 billion euros at the end of June, down from 546 billion euros at the end of 2025. That amounted to a fall of 58 billion euros in six months, he said. He went as far as to ask whether the Banque de France might be organising a resale of these debt holdings on financial markets.
Central bank's response
In its statement issued the following day, the Banque de France said the reduction in the stock of public debt it holds results exclusively from securities reaching maturity, adding that no sale on the markets has taken place since their acquisition.
How the debt pile built up
The French debt held by the Banque de France stems from two asset-purchase programmes run by the European Central Bank (ECB): one launched in mid-2014 and an emergency programme introduced in March 2020 during the Covid-19 crisis. When the securities bought under these schemes matured, the Banque de France had been able to reinvest the proceeds by buying new bonds. That reinvestment stopped being possible in July 2023 for the first programme and in January 2025 for the second, in line with 2023 decisions by the ECB's Governing Council, the statement noted.
The central bank said it remained available to the National Assembly's Finance Committee to explain how these monetary policy operations work, while respecting its independence.
Lagarde calls plan 'farcical'
Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, also weighed in, describing the proposal to cancel the French debt held by the Banque de France as farcical in an interview with the regional newspaper Ouest-France. She said France would then find no more lenders, calling the idea financially very dangerous and describing it as a violation of European treaties.
