France is getting downgraded by every major rating agency at once, and the reason is a deficit it cannot control. France has blown through the EU's 3% deficit limit every year for the better part of a decade. It hit 9% of GDP in 2020 and still runs around 5.5%, and the government's big new plan is to get the deficit down to 5% by 2027. They are calling that progress. All five agencies, Fitch, Moody's, S&P Global, DBRS and Scope, have cut France, several of them below AA for the first time in modern history. When a core economy treats a 5% deficit as an achievement, the bond market stops giving it the benefit of the doubt. France is the test case for every government that runs deficits forever.