[3pt14159]

France's Debt-to-GDP[0] went up about 17 points during the first year of covid, compared to Canada's 20 points. In the following years it's gone down about 3 points, which is about the same for Canada. I don't really know who else to compare France to, since Germany, UK, and USA all have their own weird complications and Italy was hit early by covid in a way that most countries were not.

No matter who was in charge of France there was going to be a giant spike in debt during at the very least covid, and now dealing with this Ukraine mess.

[0] I greatly prefer net Debt-to-GDP, which is a closer approximation to a country's actual balance sheet, as a measure, but it isn't frequently reported and most people tend not to care.