François Villeroy de Galhau réagit à son départ : "C'est ma décision personnelle, en homme libre"

Listen, I'll say it very simply. I answered a call for a beautiful mission launched by a beautiful person. The mission, as you said, is the Fondation Apprentis d'Auteuil, which is the largest social foundation in France in the field of helping children and training young people in difficulty. It's a cause that touches me deeply. And the person is Jean-Marc Sauvé, former Vice President of the Council of State, a highly respected public figure whose term ends in May and is neither renewable nor extendable. So the question I asked myself was whether this timeline was compatible with my mission at the Bank of France, and I answered yes. It's been nearly 11 years since I've been at the Bank of France, and it so happens that by June we will have crossed a series of strategic milestones: adopted our medium-term plan, a G7 meeting, published the next letter to the President of the Republic. So I made this decision, it's my personal decision as a free man. Now, to tell you, David Abiker, it won't be easy to leave the Bank of France. It's the most beautiful mission I've exercised in my life as a public servant.

I have to stop you right there, David Abiker. I ask that my personal decision be respected. It's not because there's an electoral deadline in 15 months that we should forbid ourselves from making a decision we believe is personally right. I made my decision based on the call I received from Auteuil, that's all.

It wasn't his to object, if I may say so, regarding the President of the Republic. He didn't tell me to stay until the end of my term. When I saw him, I had already made my decision and I informed him a few days before the public announcement.

A little better than that, David Abiker, because we conduct a monthly business survey of 8,500 entrepreneurs across all sectors, and in early February, it's a bit better than we expected. That's what business leaders are telling us. When they look back on January, it was a bit above what they anticipated, and for February, they expect continued growth. Now, growth in France is resilient. I won't say it's sufficient, and we'll probably talk about the necessary reforms. It's notably resilient in industry, which is striking because it's driven by two sectors where France is well positioned: defense and aerospace. We perhaps haven't emphasized enough that France has a relatively good industrial specialization in these difficult new times. So we are saying there should be growth of between 0.2% and 0.3% in the first quarter. This confirms our forecast of 1% growth for the year. Once again, it's not exceptionally brilliant, but remember, a year or 18 months ago, everyone feared a recession. We are well above that.

First, there's a general phenomenon at the European and international level: despite all the uncertainties in our environment, despite, let's say it very directly, the war in Ukraine has been part of the uncertainties for a long time, and added to that is the unpredictability of American policy since the election of Mr. Trump. Despite all that, the economy, whether in the United States, Europe, or globally, is resisting better than expected. I believe we must first pay tribute to the courage of business leaders and the French who work. We might talk about employment, but there have never been more French people at work than today. However, business leaders are suffering from uncertainty. They tell us about international uncertainty, which I mentioned, and national uncertainty. You survey them regularly, that's what they tell you. We survey them on an uncertainty indicator which, although it has fallen in recent weeks, notably with the adoption of the budget, remains higher than usual. And in some areas of uncertainty, we must be clear, there is fiscal and budgetary uncertainty in the long term. We adopted a 2026 budget, but we haven't solved the problem of debt and public spending in France. That weighs a bit on the collective morale of business leaders, but individually, things are going rather better. Basically, we are struck, David Abiker, by two things. First, our head, our morale isn't doing very well, but our body, the real data, is resisting better. And the second thing is that our individual morale, which applies to business leaders, is rather better than our collective morale. It's like polls when you ask the French about their happiness, they say they are happy, but about collective happiness, they say the French are unhappy. It's a trend.

We have indeed paid a lot of attention to the rise in the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter, and I think it deserves a minute of our attention. I'm going to relativize this figure a little bit over a single quarter because when you look over the long term, for 12 years, since 2014, employment is a real collective progress of the French economy. We have recreated jobs, we have reduced the unemployment rate. In previous comparable economic slowdowns, we were above 10% unemployment. We are at 7.9%. Now, what happened in the fourth quarter? When the unemployment rate rises a bit, there can be two explanations. Either employment is decreasing. That's not the case. The employment rate at 70% is the highest we've ever had in our history. Or, and this is the explanation, there are more people coming onto the labor market, what economists call the participation rate of the population aged 15 to 64. So there are indeed more people on the labor market, notably more young people. Which means there's a slightly stronger rise in youth unemployment. That, I believe, is a point of attention. There are slightly fewer new hires by companies. They are keeping their employees in place but making fewer new hires. And there are also fewer apprenticeship and work-study contracts. This is partly a simple phenomenon because we reduced certain subsidies that were excessive. Think of the apprenticeship bonuses for students at grandes écoles, it's not a priority public expenditure, but there is still a small warning signal regarding new hires of young people to watch closely.

First, David Abiker, a scoop: we are in 2026, so we still have time. The Draghi report is less than 18 months old, but it's true we need to go faster and stronger. Things have happened, but I believe they haven't been visible enough. If there's a lesson from the American administration, which has a lot of inconsistency, it's that you need to go faster and stronger. That's what we're saying, and we're saying it, the 21 governors of the 21 countries. This signal of unanimity is very significant. And in the timeline, I believe we need to remember what Jacques Delors did with the single market: he set a date, January 1, 1993. I believe we need to set a date to implement this reform agenda in 2028, during the Trump years. Then, on substance, things have happened, we shouldn't be too unfair to the European Commission. The glass may be partly full, but it's not visible, it's not communicated enough. We are putting forward a number of levers to act. I noted earlier that French growth at 1% is resilient but not sufficient. That's the problem for all of Europe. When you look over the long term, average growth, what economists call potential growth, was at 2% at the beginning of the century in 2000. It's fallen to around 1% today, nearly halved. We can regain some of that ground. So we're talking about what we call the Union of Savings and Investment, meaning mobilizing private savings for companies' equity. We have plenty of private savings in Europe.