François Bayrou warns France — and Europe — against the politics of denial
With Alerte sur la France qui vient, François Bayrou is not only publishing a book about France. He is sending a warning to all European democracies: a country that refuses to face debt, weakens its public services and normalises the extremes risks losing control of its future.
For Bayrou, the warning begins with public debt. France, he says, has reached a point where the issue is no longer theoretical: “The situation of the country has become such that, despite many warnings, we are now at risk of an accident. And in this accident, there is something even worse: a war between generations.” He adds that France has now passed “€3,520 billion in debt” and that the real shock is immediate: “It is not in some time, it is not one day. It is now.”
His central argument is brutal: debt is already taking away France’s ability to act. “Next year, the totality of income tax paid by the French people […] will not be enough to pay the interest on the debt,” Bayrou warns. For a European country that must invest in schools, hospitals, climate, defence and sovereignty, this is not only a budgetary issue. It is a strategic one.
Bayrou also rejects the easy answer that higher taxes alone can solve the crisis. “The truth is that France is the country in the world with the most taxes, and one cannot say that we are doing better,” he says. “The question for me is the complete reorganisation of our public action.” In other words, France needs not only more revenue or less spending, but a deeper reform of the way the state works.
The same demand for seriousness shapes his warning against the extremes. Bayrou argues that the next presidential election has “changed nature” because France is facing “a double mortal threat.” His words are clear: “There is no country in the world that has recovered from the far right or the far left.” Why? Because, he says, “the far right and the far left organise civil war inside the country” by choosing internal enemies — immigrants, Europe, or the rich.
This is where his book becomes European and international. In a world of Trump, Putin, China and strategic instability, France cannot afford an internal collapse. Bayrou praises Thierry Breton precisely in these terms: “He is the only political leader in Europe who resisted Trump and resisted Putin.” He also recalls Breton’s role in strengthening European armies and in building “a diplomatic and commercial machine of resistance to China.”
Bayrou’s warning is not only economic or geopolitical. It is also civic. On secularism, he defends laïcité as “the only key for different religious and philosophical convictions to live together.” For him, this means “the radical separation of religious conviction and power” — not hostility to religion, but the condition for freedom in a plural society.
On end-of-life legislation, his position is cautious and deeply human. “No, I would not have voted for it,” he says, calling it “an immense problem of conscience.” His fear is that once society says “death is care,” the idea will “enter public consciousness” and affect above all “the weakest and most fragile.”
Taken together, Alerte sur la France qui vient is a call for responsibility: against fiscal denial, against the shortcuts of extremism, against identity politics, and for a France able to remain a pillar of Europe. Bayrou’s message is not pessimistic, but it is severe: France still has the strength to recover, provided it stops pretending that the bill can always be paid later — or by someone else.
