While the Greek crisis has unnerved credit markets and required some European countries to pay the most in a decade to sell bonds, France has been getting some of its best terms ever. France, along with its euro-zone partners Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, is selling debt at or near record lows. Indeed, from 2008 until this spring, when the Greek contagion began to spread to Spain, Portugal and Italy, the cost of financing had been steadily declining for almost all countries in the euro-zone. Historically, the French government has issued three-month Treasury bills at an average of 3 percent. But since the start of 2010, it has been doing so at an average of 0.26 percent, a record low, Philippe Mills, chief executive of Agence France Tresor, the national debt management office, said in an interview. And two weeks ago, he noted, France sold 10-year bonds priced to yield 3.05 percent -- also a record low. In normal times, low bond yields, which move in the opposite direction of prices, suggest that investors are sanguine about inflation risks and confident of being repaid. Some of the fall in yields may also stem from the perceived safety of the core euro-zone countries, and from the flood of cash central banks have pumped into the system since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. French 10-year bonds currently yield 3.09 percent, above the 2.63 percent yield on comparable German bonds, but below the 3.28 percent on United States bonds and the 3.49 percent paid by Britain. Investor demand for French bonds has been so strong that the country is ahead of schedule on its plan to raise 188 billion euros, or $228 billion, in medium- and long-term bonds earmarked for reducing the country's deficit this year, Mills said, having already raised about 61 percent. As a result, the government would scrap an optional auction it had tentatively scheduled for August. Mills also played down concerns that turmoil in the euro zone would lead overseas investors to dump European assets. He said South American central bankers had told him recently that they remained committed to buying euro-zone debt, and that in personal discussions with officials from China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, he had been assured that Beijing had no interest in reducing its own holdings. 'They are very confident,' he said of the Chinese officials. 'I spoke to them just after the May 9 decisions,' when the European Union and International Monetary Fund agreed to a 750 billion euro ($908 billion) stabilization package for euro-zone countries, 'and they were impressed by the magnitude and the consistency of the package.' Mills noted that the premium investors paid for German debt had been rising compared with France's, a phenomenon that had occurred even as French bond yields were declining. 'It's true that you have a widening of spreads of French bonds over German bonds, but you have also a widening of spreads of Dutch bonds over German bonds, of Austrian bonds and Finnish bonds over German bonds,' Mills said. 'The question is whether it's completely rational to push German bonds to these levels.' He acknowledged that investors have long looked to German debt as a benchmark for safety, but noted it also benefited from having the benchmark government bond futures contract for Europe. Mills said that at the height of the recession, the French Treasury increased its issuance of short-dated bills, but that with recovery under way, that trend was being 'stabilized,' and would be reduced. Since last year and despite the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, he said, the French government has seen increased demand from 'buy-and-hold investors.' He cited the case of the auction of a 5 billion euro ($6 billion), 50-year bond in March, which was over-subscribed by 3.3 billion euros ($4 billion). About 90 percent of the issue was sold to non-French investors, including big United States pension funds, and 50 percent went to buyers outside the euro area. 'We have been beneficiaries of the gyrations in the market,' he said. 