France is planning to reduce public development aid by up to 40 percent as part of its €32 billion budget cuts for 2025. French NGOs engaged in international solidarity are deeply concerned about the impact this will have on the world’s most vulnerable populations, especially as the United States – the largest provider of overseas aid – prepares to withdraw its support entirely.
France’s international solidarity mechanism helps finance development projects around the world on everything from health, food, education, water, to human rights and the fight against inequality. Many programmes are angled in favour of women and girls.
Rolling back development aid
While global warming and conflict mean needs are greater than ever, France’s austerity budget for 2025, if passed, would reduce public development assistance (PDA) by more than €2 billion – close to 40 percent of its annual funding.
Coordination Sud – a collective representing some 180 French non-profits working on international solidarity programmes – gathered in protest outside the National Assembly last week.
“We understand everyone has to make an effort” says Elodie Barralon, the group’s advocacy officer, but the cuts are “huge compared to compared to any other public service budget.”
The cuts follow a growing trend worldwide to roll back development aid.
American president Donald Trump has announced that the US – the world’s largest international aid donor – is freezing foreign aid.
“We’re in a very difficult context because all countries are stepping back on their commitments, especially at the UN level,” Barralon says. “And now we have very strong opposition, especially over the Atlantic, stepping back in terms of discrimination, inclusion and diversity [initiatives].
“So France stepping back on the budget will create more crises and send the wrong message internationally. In terms of political commitments, we’re tapping into the wrong budget.”
Listen to a conversation with Elodie Barralon in the Spotlight on France podcast episode #123
Reneging on France’s commitments
Critics say the cuts fly in the face of France’s commitments to international solidarity.
In 2021, France signed into law a pledge to reach the UN’s target of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI) on aid by 2025.
Only Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg and Sweden achieved that goal in 2023, but France was heading in the right direction devoting 0.55 percent of its GNI in that year.
By 2023, France had become the fifth largest international donor behind the US, Germany, Japan, and the UK, according to the OECD.
If the proposed cuts go through, France’s contribution will slump to 0.45 percent of GNI. “We’ll go back seven years,” Barralon says.
It would be a blow to France’s image internationally, Coordination Sud’s president Olivier Bruyeron adds.
“The proposed policy shows France withdrawing into itself, [it’s] an irresponsible abandonment of international solidarity.”
It’s all the more surprising, he notes, given that during the 2023 global climate finance summit in Paris, “France brought together a whole host of heads of state and high-level leaders to do exactly the opposite, saying public and private funding for international solidarity needed to be stepped up”.
The cuts will also have a major impact on France’s Development Agency (AFD) – a public funded body that grants loans to low income countries. As well as being forced to drop some existing projects, it will divert loans away from the countries that most need it.
“We won’t be able to lend at preferential rates – only to countries that are capable of taking on debt at certain rates, and therefore probably those that need it least,” says Gilles Maduit, AFD’s Asia coordinator.
“So we’ll certainly have to redirect loans towards emerging countries rather than the least developed countries – those with the least infrastructure and who need the most help to achieve sustainable development objectives.”
He cites the examples of Haiti, countries in the Sahel and small island nations in the Pacific.
“We feel a bit helpless because it’s precisely when we need the biggest budget to help these countries, that our budgets are being cut.”
France halts development aid to Mali
Development aid to curb migration?
France’s Senate voted the hefty cuts on 16 January, and the 2025 budget was approved in a joint parliamentary committee last Friday.
While the foreign ministry argues hefty increases to the development aid budget between 2017 and 2022 will allow the cuts to be offset, Max Brisson, a senator with the conservative right Republicans (LR) says savings can be made by choosing beneficiaries more carefully.
“In friendly countries, development aid is essential,” he told RFI, citing Cote d’Ivoire and Benin. “But we should question whether development aid should continue to be directed toward countries that have become adversaries of France, such as China and Algeria.”
Socialist Senator Rachid Temal regrets the impact on all beneficiaries, but beyond that points to “fewer opportunities for French companies operating in these regions”.
Others argue that France’s solidarity policy has to be maintained to help curb migration.
“On the one hand, we want to prevent people from coming, to restrict asylum and migration. On the other, we don’t want to help them stay in their countries and develop their own economies,” noted Green Party Senator Akli Mellouli. “It’s contradictory.”
He cited the French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean which is struggling to cope with a large number of undocumented migrant families from neighbouring Comoros.
“Some political figures talk a lot about reducing illegal immigration to Mayotte. But the Comoros must be developed,” Mellouli argued. “When people want to leave their country, they will leave.”
Unicef sounds alarm over child poverty in French overseas departments
Shrinking civic space
Coordination Sud is wary of the political debate linking development aid to migration, preferring to find a way out of the financing conundrum.
“We have the solution,” says Barralon, referring to solidarity taxes on airline tickets and financial transactions introduced under rightwing presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006 and 2012 respectively.
“They were put in place to support and fund development assistance but [their use] was not specified. According to our estimations, the taxes could raise up to €1.6 billion this year – that’s nearly want they want to cut in the development aid yearly budget.”
NGOs are also concerned over what the budget cuts mean for France’s non-profit sector, which employs around 50,000 staff and many thousands more as volunteers.
“Some of the member organisations of Coordination Sud are already considering redundancy plans in 2025 and perhaps closing down if it goes that far,” Barralon says.
For her, the cuts are “very political”, with the government under pressure from the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally – the largest single party in parliament.
“These cuts are also in a wider context of shrinking civic space, far-right populist movements having more of a say and pushing for national fold.” Civil society, she says, is no longer seen as “a counter-power and a partner in implementing development aid, but more of a burden and something that we have to keep quiet. One way of keeping us quiet is to cut the funding.”
And yet “we’re all interdependent” she says, “and what is happening elsewhere will impact us now.”
