Earlier quoted context omitted.
France's pension system (for public employees in particular) is in deep trouble, as our many of its other 'free lunch' policies. Its debt is looking similar to Greece shortly before '09. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/government-debt-to-gd...
FWIW, that's lower than the US, and not that much higher than the UK (and we don't really know what is a good debt/gdp ratio). Also, those numbers are not directly comparable (e.g. in Germany a lot of what used to be counted as gvt is now private: the work done is the same, as are the obligations, but it appears in a different "bucket").
Bad things will happen when the average person realizes what this means: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL