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PARIS — French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon says he wants to set France’s debt “on fire.” Now his allies are scrambling to spell out what he means. The leftist leader’s controversial plan to write off billions of euros worth of French debt, which has caused uproar among his political opponents and central bankers alike, is also prompting his economic advisors to try to soften his rhetoric. “Mélenchon’s comments sparked a reaction and fueled debate; in that sense, they were successful,” said Eric Berr, an economist with Institut La Boétie, a think tank affiliated with Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party, in an interview. But Berr and other left-leaning economists have tried to reframe the debate around what they see as the grip of financial markets over sovereign debt. However, Mélenchon isn’t tamping down his language. With polls suggesting he could qualify for the first time in a second-round face-off against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, and as rivals from more moderate parties are struggling to emerge from a jam-packed field, the 75-year-old appears keen to set France’s fiscal debate on his own terms. Playing hot and cold In a press conference with online media and influencers last June, the presidential candidate outlined his idea of “freezing the public debt held by the Bank of France at a zero interest rate,” echoing a proposal from his previous presidential campaign to convert these debts into perpetual zero-interest debt — in other words, loans with no repayment date and no interest payable. The French central bank holds less than one-sixth of French debt, totaling some €488 billion. Mélenchon’s proposal would be like “putting the debt in the fridge,” he first said — before going on to talk about “throwing it to the fire.” The latter metaphor sparked a Europe-wide controversy later in the summer, fueled by a viral post on X reposting the clip in August. Political opponents have predicted a “financial crisis,” “ruin” or “bankruptcy” should the state fail to follow through on its financial commitments. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, alongside the Governor of Germany’s Bundesbank, Joachim Nagel, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Moulin, said that such a measure would be “illegal.” In an opinion piece published in August, Berr and other economists aligned with Mélenchon tried to cool the controversy by emphasizing the “freeze” rather than the “fire.” “Mélenchon’s idea of ‘putting the securities in the fridge’ means to remove part of the stock of French sovereign debt from the market [by placing it in the central bank’s vaults], in order to shield it from speculative attacks,” the opinion piece reads. In other words, unlike private investors, who can sell the government debt securities they hold if they no longer consider France’s economic policy to be credible — thereby driving up interest rates — the ECB, for its part, holds on to securities it has acquired until they mature: it freezes them, so to speak. “The central issue is not cancellation as such, but how we break free from our dependence on the financial markets,” Berr said. The opinion piece then suggests that the central bank should maintain its holdings of public debt — what they refer to as “the freeze” — or even increase them. These tools already exist, as the ECB introduced them during the sovereign debt crises of the 2010s and the Covid pandemic in 2020. But they are being phased out, and since central banks are independent from governments, only they can decide to use them again. Frozen for eternity The freezing metaphor, however, still allows for some ambiguity. While Berr and his coauthors seek to freeze debt from financial markets until maturity, many in France Unbowed argue for converting the debt held by the central bank into perpetual debt — something closer to sovereign debt cryogenics. While the central bank has already purchased government debt securities on the financial markets — what the opinion piece is suggesting — it has never canceled them or converted them into perpetual debt — what Mélenchon wants. But Mélenchon continues to use the terms “freezing” and “canceling” interchangeably. “We have proposed […] that these debt securities held by the European Central Bank should either be frozen or written off,” he reiterated in a Sept. 12 speech. His policy team said in comments that this aimed “to emphasize that there [were] several techniques for neutralizing the debt held by the European Central Bank.” Mélenchon’s proposal sets him apart from his rivals, particularly those on the right and in the center, for whom fiscal discipline — particularly when it comes to pensions — is a top priority. Yet it appears to resonate with French voters, and the presidential candidate was quick to publicize a Sept. 5 poll showing 43% of the public supported canceling parts of the debt, while only 31% opposed it. Critics of the candidate, notably central bankers, argue that this would be illegal, as it would amount to direct financing of member states by the ECB, which is prohibited by the treaties that laid the foundation for the euro and the ECB. The treaties would therefore need to be amended, which would take time and require unanimous approval. Although he disputes that the measure is unlawful, Mélenchon emphasized that, should he win in 2027, he would seek allies at the European level to push the measure through. The ice is melting But beyond any potential political and legal hurdle, Mélenchon’s proposal faces, above all, an existential threat as the amount of French debt the Bank of France holds is shrinking. Mélenchon wants to “freeze or cancel” only the portion of the debt held by the French central bank, which he put at 18% in June. His estimate, however, is out of date. By the end of 2025, this proportion had already fallen to just 15%, according to the specialist website Fipeco. And it is expected to further decline. In early 2025, the ECB discontinued the debt-purchasing policy it implemented in response to the economic crises of 2010 and 2020. As a result, the Bank of France — which conducts operations in France on behalf of the ECB — is gradually being depleted of these securities as they are redeemed. France Unbowed MP Eric Coquerel said he had received a letter from Moulin, the Bank of France governor, informing him that the bank’s stock of securities would fall by €80.6 billion this year, dropping to €465.3 billion by the year-end. The share could therefore fall somewhere between 11% and 12%, Coquerel said. “That’s what worries me most,” added Coquerel, who favors canceling the debt. It is also for this reason that maintaining the stock has become the priority for France Unbowed. If the central bank no longer holds any debt securities, “there will be nothing left to write off” or to convert into perpetual debt, Coquerel said.

PIDDINGTON, England — Few would suspect this sedate village north of Oxford, population 350, is on the front line of Britain’s immigration battles. But the signs marking entry into the newly-established “principality” — fresh from a headline-grabbing vote to symbolically secede from the U.K. — tell a different story. A father and son visiting from the island of Jersey posed for pictures and brandished their passports as they crossed a white picket fence. They joked that they were immigrating here. The village’s declaration of “independence” from the rest of the U.K. came in a symbolic referendum, which took aim at the use of a military barracks on Piddington’s periphery to house up to 1,250 asylum seekers. The result was an overwhelming 285 in favor of leaving the U.K., with just 26 villagers opting to remain. Now this very British protest threatens to spread to other shires. It has become a magnet for Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s critics — handing them fresh ammunition to use against him as they push to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. All the while, Britain’s far-right is threatening to shift attention away from the watery frontier of the English Channel toward “defending” Piddington from newcomers. That raises the prospect of unwanted, balaclava-wearing activists descending on an otherwise tranquil village. Tea and trouble When POLITICO headed down rural roads to reach the bucolic breakaway “state” this week, Kemi Badenoch was there by pure coincidence. The Conservative Party leader was following a line of right-wingers pledging their support for this tiny patch of Middle England in revolt. Over plates of biscuits and mugs of tea in the small village hall that has been the nerve center of this pseudo-secessionist movement, Badenoch listens attentively to the fears of the more than 40 assembled local women. And she leans in to the darkest fears the villagers harbor. Not only is this about migration, she said, but it’s a “huge safeguarding risk” too. She warns of a “criminal element” being housed on Piddington’s doorstep — the arrival of hundreds of men whose identities are little known, up against cherished playing fields that back onto the military base (albeit through barbed wire fencing). Badenoch also started making her party’s abstract — and divisive — vision for leaving the ECHR a little more real in the eyes of those on the frontline. It’s a stance that she knows has struggled to find purchase among more traditional conservatives, who were divided over Brexit. But the Conservative leader has put leaving the Convention at the heart of her plans to stop the unauthorized arrival of small boats. It comes as her party faces the threat of being eclipsed on the right of British politics by Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK. It’s certainly tricky terrain for the Tories. The boat arrivals — and the asylum backlog they created — started under the last Conservative government Badenoch was a part of. Kemi Badenoch speaks to local business leaders in Thirsk, England on June 3, 2026. | Ian Forsyth/Getty Images “We tried a lot of things. We kept getting stuck in the courts, and the Convention on Human Rights is the problem,” Badenoch said, while acknowledging that making this case has proved a “tougher job than you would think, despite what people see on the news each day.” “We need something more modern,” she added as a springer spaniel cross was discreetly fed a corner of a digestive biscuit. “But the bottom line is we’re not in government, and we haven’t convinced everyone why this is important.” There are no signs of any dissent from this corner of the countryside, which is now faced with the reality of taking their share of asylum seekers who are often housed in poorer towns and cities. Small boat crossings of the English Channel may be down this year, but the salience of the issue isn’t. Successful crossings from France still amount to more than 17,000 people this year, so the legal duty to house them while their claims are assessed remains onerous for the state. Here Badenoch eyes an opportunity. She told the “Piddington women” that she’ll be forcing votes on the issue in parliament — a bid to bind Labour MPs to their decision to back these sites. As with other right-wing rivals, Badenoch has no clear answer on how to prevent MoD Bicester — the military site that has Piddington residents worried — from being turned into short-term emergency housing. Face down or back down? For now, that is Andy Burnham’s problem. The Conservative government started using hotels to house thousands of migrants while their claims are assessed, but it’s the current Labour government that now must deliver on a pledge to end their use.  The use of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) has been met with similar outrage. And that’s why the disused MoD stock is being used, even though there are few to no facilities for asylum seekers in Piddington, bar a medieval church and a village hall that’s likely to be unwelcoming. Refugee charities condemn the use of such bases as “inhumane,” while the right has seized on them as a poison forced on undeserving countryside communities.  Though unlikely, ministers could still back away from Piddington, given that the village’s referendum vote fell within the consultation period during which the government must consider local objections to the proposals. But Labour MPs in the North of England, whose constituencies have long been used for asylum accommodation, are urging the government to “hold firm.” “Yes, it could be a flashpoint. But then, so have asylum hotels been,” one of them, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “So there is no perfect solution. But from a security and efficiency perspective, for both asylum seekers and settled communities, it makes sense I think to use former bases.” Piddington’s symbolic referendum took aim at the use of a military barracks on the village’s periphery to house up to 1,250 asylum seekers. | Carl Court/Getty Images Another pointed out that former mining villages in their constituency have long had asylum seekers “dumped” into their communities, helping drive up the Reform UK vote. “Now people in a lovely little village near the Cotswolds are whinging,” this MP continued. “There’s a reason why ex-military camps are happening, and it’s because communities are pissed off about hotels and HMOs — so I’m not terribly impressed.” Even one opposition frontbencher who’s taken a keen interest in the Oxfordshire village predicted the government will have to “make an example of Piddington” — or run the risk of other MoD-adjacent villages following suit. Plus, there’s the raw political reality that the military sites tend to be in leafier, Conservative or Liberal Democrat-voting areas, rather than the more urban sites held by Labour.  Burnham has also made much of his desire to put power into the hands of communities as prime minister. On this issue, he may face charges of hypocrisy if he overrides local concerns in favor of national necessity. Making noise There are many reasons why these particular proposals — right in the heart of England’s fabled green and pleasant land — are grabbing international attention. The campaign has certainly been bolstered by its media-savvy residents, who include a television news editor and a business consultant. Beyond the novel approach of declaring independence, the Piddington campaigners are also deploying well-worn strategies from the NIMBY playbook. These include flagging the presence of environmentally protected, gold-crested newts on the site. And a judicial review — a formal legal challenge — is in the works, too. Then there’s the local farmer with an old friend who was an ecologist at the Environment Agency. Jo Haw-Cook, whose family has farmed the land of Piddington for more than six decades, was introduced to POLITICO as “the bat lady.” She has been spending days around the military base using a heterodyne bat detector to pick up their ultrasonic frequencies. She says the government has sought to claim there are no protected species of bats in the vicinity. “Well, we just blew that out the water,” she told POLITICO, purporting to have collated evidence that Barbastelle bats — listed as a priority species — are locally present. “The newts will possibly slow it down — but this one particular bat has stopped major infrastructure projects before,” she says. The movement spreads Perhaps the odds of bumping into a right-wing politician in Piddington weren’t so slim after all. In recent weeks, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf has dropped by, as has a key rival, Restore Britain’s Rupert Lowe. Even Elon Musk has weighed in on X. But there are unintended consequences from all this attention for the village too.  The far-right activist Daniel Thomas, a convicted kidnapper who goes by the name Danny Tommo, has threatened to bring 5,000 men to camp around the MoD site to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers. Andy Burnham has made much of his desire to put power into the hands of communities as prime minister. | Ryan Murphy/Getty Images This is going down poorly with locals. Sandra Innes, a retired management trainer who moved to Piddington from East London two decades ago, said: “As women, that number of men descending on a village is scary, regardless. Because unfortunately when these things happen, as we’ve seen too often, you get opposing views and violence comes, and that is the last thing we actually want.” Christina Gower, a 26-year-old graphic designer, added: “Our whole campaign is about how unsuitable it is for a massive amount of men. So we wouldn’t necessarily invite that to our village. It doesn’t make sense.” Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Piddington, has been pushing the Home Office for extra funding if the Patriot Platform does descend on the village, as has the local police and crime commissioner, either way.  Tim McNally, the parish council chair who’s led the independence drive, was keen to point out they’ll accept support regardless of political affiliation, though it’s clear the focus is on helping spread his “independence” movement. He told POLITICO that “a thousand or so” people have contacted him asking for his “blueprint.”  On Tuesday night, representatives from the Suffolk parish of Barnham met McNally in Piddington to discuss how to hold their own referendum in opposition to similar plans for their own nearby RAF base. Again, such a vote would be purely symbolic. But it would represent the spread of something that, for Burnham, risks becoming a much bigger show of defiance.

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