Unlimited: our problem is not so much the debt from the Covid shock, but the pre-Covid debt (already 97% of GDP at the end of 2019) and especially now the post-Covid path. Indeed, Europe and France have faced unforeseen external crises in the past - the 2008 financial crisis, the Covid crisis, and now the war in Ukraine - and more crises will arise in the future. Furthermore, in order to achieve our two future transformations, ecological and digital, our investment needs are massive. The ecological transition alone will require additional investments estimated in Europe at EUR 360 billion at least per year between now and 2030,i of which one-third will be public investments. Europe's digital and innovation lag is also partly due to insufficient funding: in 2019, total public  Page 3 of 9 and private R&D spending was equivalent to 2.1% of EU GDP compared to 3.1% in the United States and 4.6% in South Korea. But even before these risks and needs, according to our projections, French public debt is expected to remain at best almost stable at around 110% of GDP up to 2032, assuming no change in fiscal policy . Clearly, this is insufficient to ensure fiscal sustainability in the long run. A more ambitious target should be set: a return much below 100% of GDP within ten years, and below pre-Covid levels. This should be achieved in particular by limiting the increase in real spending to 0.5% each year, compared with more than 1% over the previous decade.
It first seems reasonable to me to avoid, in this matter and at this stage, any Treaty change. We could keep the 3% deficit target, which is a useful anchor, and even the 60% debt target. But the rule of a 1/20 annual linear adjustment towards the latter target has become unrealistic because it is too strict, especially for highly indebted countries. And, instead of the structural deficit which no one really understands, or even knows how to calculate accurately we could set a ceiling on the growth rate of public spending as an operational target. At constant tax rates, this amounts to much the same thing in economic terms, and was the main thrust of the reform put forward in 2019 by the European Budget Committee (EBC) chaired by Niels Thygesen. These rules should not simply be seen as a constraint imposed by Brussels, but should be widely internalised, 'taken up' in our French budgetary debate, as they are in our national interest. 2. Adding a European stabilisation and investment capacity Allow me to imagine a successful exit from the forthcoming tough European and Franco-German - negotiations: the southern European countries - including France - accept domestic rules for fiscal discipline; the northern countries including Germany - accept a European fiscal capacity.