Paris’ discomfort was sparked by a report in Politico on Wednesday that France was heading for a “moment of humiliation in financial markets as the budget mess worsens”.

“The growing sense of France’s budget crisis is leading the country to a moment of humiliation in financial markets: It seems only a matter of time before investors declare France a worse credit risk than Greece” noted Politico.

“It is not appropriate to compare France’s situation with Greece’s,” French Finance Minister Antoine Armand said on Thursday, responding to tensions in the French bond market that have led some investors to compare the country to Greece, the agency noted.

“France is not Greece,” Armand told the French network BFM TV.

What Politico reported among others

The yield on France’s benchmark 10-year government bond edged higher than its Greek counterpart on Wednesday as investors gauged the risk that parties on both ends of the political spectrum could topple Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government over its planned budget for next year.

Until 1 p.m. (local time) in Paris, the yield on the French bond was at 3.03%, while its Greek bond was just one hundredth of a point higher at 3.04%, Politico noted.

Short-term Greek debt is already trading below its French equivalent, due to a series of technical market quirks stemming from Greece’s bailout a decade ago and the European Central Bank’s bond buying in recent years. However, the 10-year rate is seen by most as a clearer reflection of the relative risk of the two countries.

As recently as 2015, when then-prime minister Alexis Tsipras tried and failed to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s bailout, its 10-year bonds were yielding as much as 14 percentage points above France’s. The gap has gradually narrowed over the years, but was still 0.8 percentage points as recently as July, when voters stripped Macron of his majority in parliament.

Another measure of markets’ frustration with France is that the premium they demand over their German counterpart is now higher than at any time since the depths of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis in 2012, at 0.87 percentage points.