Borrowing costs for France hit a 12-year high relative to Germany, and were equal to those of Greece for the first time ever

France’s benchmark bond yield matched Greece’s for the first time on record, putting the bloc’s second-largest economy on an equal footing with a country once at the heart of the European sovereign debt crisis.

French 10-year bond yields, which move inversely to prices, rose as high as 3.022 per cent in early trading, taking them marginally above Greece’s yields at 3.013 per cent. Greek yields later dipped to 2.