The paper offers a chronicle of the relations between state administration reform and debt in France. Successive reforms between the sixties to 2007 have not been sufficient to contain public debt. Between 2007 and early 2012, the French government undertook substantial measures to reduce government expenditure through a policy of reorganisation, wage controls and job reductions (through a principle of natural wastage under which one in two posts was not replaced after retirement). These measures were taken slightly before the beginning of the crisis and were not presented by the government of the time as a consequence of austerity. The arrival of a socialist government in 2012 brought a change in style and in some priorities (increase in fiscal pressure, new jobs in education and justice), but no rollback in the objectives for pay moderation and public sector employment. The economic crisis is now explicitly cited in justification.