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It’s been almost fourteen years since you led Bpifrance, the armed arm of the State to finance and support French companies. Why did you decide to intervene in the public debate with a book (La Dette sociale de la France 1974-2024, Odile Jacob, 544 p., €28.90) which warns about public debt and our social model?
I wanted to raise awareness about France’s social debt on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Social Security, in October 2025. By working on deindustrialization, I had become convinced that the problems of the economy and the welfare state were linked. Indeed, after starting to work in social ministries more than thirty years ago, I continued my career in companies, which gave me a global overview of French economic and social life, and I drew from it a simple conviction: if we do not deal with the problem of the welfare state and the debt it accumulates, we will end up blocking the country.
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