The agency also forecasts GDP growth slightly lower than the government's projections, which for its part expect 1%. Moody's forecasts growth at 5.2%, after 5.4% this year. The Moody's agency maintained France's rating at Aa3 on Friday evening, an assessment of the country's ability to repay its debt, while a downgrade was widely expected.
To justify its Aa3 rating, which characterizes good quality debt, Moody's explains that it assumes that a 2027 budget reducing the public deficit will be adopted, while social tensions will moderate somewhat in the coming months.
This decision allows France to temporarily rule out a risk of deterioration feared by the financial markets, which follows the tensions observed in recent days on sovereign debt.
However, this differential is still at a high level. It reached 1.74 points at the close last week, and up to 1.78 points during the session, its highest level since 2011.
The French ten-year borrowing rate fell back below the symbolic 5% mark, standing at 4.90% compared to 5.02% on Friday. The gap between French and German 10-year borrowing rates, which measures the extra required by investors to lend to France rather than Germany, seen as the euro zone's safest borrower, narrowed by about 0.14 percentage points to 1.54 points, data showed.