Dataviz · Banque de France data · April 2026

Record insolvencies in France, really?

Every month, the Banque de France (France's central bank) releases its insolvency figures. Every month, the French press leads with a new record. If this sounds familiar, the UK had its own post-COVID insolvency scare in 2023 and the US had its own PPP hangover. France is simply two years deeper into the same story. Pull up 26 years of data, pick your baseline, and see what survives the panic.

Context
In March 2020, President Macron promised the state would do "whatever it takes" to keep French businesses alive through the pandemic. Paris then rolled out one of the most generous corporate rescue packages in Europe: state-guaranteed loans, short-time work schemes, tax deferrals, and a temporary freeze on insolvency proceedings. The intended consequence was lower bankruptcies in 2020 and 2021. The inevitable one was a catch-up once the support was phased out — this is the story everyone is now watching. The question is whether the catch-up is excessive, or simply the bill finally coming due.
Latest month
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Baseline average
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Latest rolling average
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vs baseline
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latest data point
Baseline period
The five years immediately before the pandemic. The strictest baseline.
Smoothing
One-year rolling average. Smooths out seasonal noise.

Business insolvencies in France, 2000-2026

Monthly counts, seasonally adjusted. Each dot is one month of data.
Monthly (raw) Rolling average Baseline "Whatever it takes" stimulus Catch-up
Reading this chart: The dashed horizontal line is the monthly average for the baseline period you selected. The green zone marks the "whatever it takes" era (Mar 2020 — Dec 2022), when French state support suppressed insolvencies well below trend. The pink zone (Jan 2023 onward) is the catch-up. Pick 2015-2019 as the baseline and notice that the red rolling-average line spent five full years below the dashed reference. That is the part of the story that rarely makes the headlines.
Cumulative balance since March 2020
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Insolvencies avoided 2020-2022
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Excess since 2023
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Methodology. "Avoided" insolvencies during the pandemic are calculated as the difference between the observed monthly count and the baseline period's average, applied from March 2020 through December 2022. The "excess" applies the same calculation to January 2023 onward. The cumulative balance is the algebraic sum. This is the same approach used by the Banque de France, BPCE (France's second-largest banking group), the DGE (the Finance Ministry's business directorate) and Crédit Agricole's economic research team in their respective publications. For international comparison: BPCE reports France's insolvency rate in 2025 at 1.1%, the same level as 2019. The absolute count is higher mostly because the stock of French businesses has grown, driven by a surge in micro-entrepreneur registrations, France's simplified self-employment status created in 2009.
Source. Banque de France, Department of Enterprises, monthly data, seasonally adjusted, extracted 7 April 2026. Scope: France, all firm sizes, all sectors. See full series.