The business climate, which summarises the responses of business leaders to the business tendency surveys, experienced a turbulent summer: while it had remained relatively stable and close to its long-term average throughout the spring, it fell sharply in July to 94 (these responses were mainly collected before the second round of the legislative elections), before rebounding, first in August (to 97) then in September (to 98). This overall movement affected all sectors, but was particularly pronounced in services and retail trade. This partial recovery, spread over two months, shows that French companies, especially in the tertiary sector, displayed a marked but transitory pessimism, which partly dissipated once the legislative election results were known.

The political situation probably contributed to these fluctuations via uncertainty: to measure this, a specific question has been added to the outlook surveys in all European countries since 2021. Thus, in services and retail trade, a peak in uncertainty was observed this summer in France (consistent with the sudden changes in the business climate), but not elsewhere in Europe. However, uncertainty did not increase in either construction or industry in France during the summer: in these two sectors, fluctuations in the business climate are therefore probably due more to long-term factors (especially variations in orders) than to uncertainty created by the political situation...