France Is Starting To Trade Like The Periphery

Europe's Silent Crisis: France Is Breaking and Nobody Is Talking About It

German 10-year Bunds yield 3.25%. French OATs yield 4.11%. The 86bp gap is the important part: France is increasingly trading less like Germany and more like a sovereign that requires a structural risk premium.

For decades, France benefited from its position at the core of Europe. Bunds and OATs largely moved together, while ECB balance-sheet expansion helped suppress fragmentation across the region.