Focus 2030
Published 27 February 2024 in News
On February 22, 2024, an official decree formalized the French government’s announcement of a 742 million euro budget cut in its Official Development Assistance in 2024. This comes just a few months after the five-year postponement of the target of allocating 0.7% of national wealth to international solidarity, which had already seriously reduced France’s development aid ambitions. Analysis and CSOs reactions.
France is currently the world’s fourth-largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA). In 2022, it allocated 0.56% of its gross national income (GNI), or 15.2 billion euros, to this public policy. However, it has never met the international commitment, adopted by industrialized countries at the United Nations in 1970, to devote 0.7% of their revenues to ODA.
In 2021, a new law enshrined a historic step forward, stipulating that 0.7% of GNI be devoted to ODA by 2025. However, the government discreetly backtracked on this commitment in the summer of 2023, pushing back the target to 2030, on the occasion of the Interministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID).
According to Focus 2030 projections, the postponement of this target from 2025 to 2030 represents a shortfall of 11 billion euros for international development between 2025 and 2030, at a time when the most vulnerable countries are facing an unprecedented fiscal squeeze, having to choose on a daily basis between investing in the fight against poverty, education, climate and the energy transition, and repaying their debt.
While France has repeatedly pledged on the international stage to support countries most vulnerable to climate change and to the long-term consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, most notably at the June 2023 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, these new directions cast doubt.
On February 18, Bruno Le Maire, the Finance Minister, announced the government’s intention to offset the anticipated decline in French growth in 2024, with savings of 10 billion euros. Of this amount, 742 million euros have been cut from the Official Development Assistance budget, while other cuts affect the ecological transition on the national territory.
Official Development Assistance is disproportionately affected by the overall 10-billion-euro budget cut. A reduction of 742 million euros in the ODA budget line (which represents around a third of France’s total ODA) corresponds to a 12.5% drop in the 5.9 billion euros budget set out in the Finance Act for 2024, down to 5.1 billion euros (from 5.9 billion in 2023). In comparison, a 10-billion-euro reduction across all budget lines corresponds to a 1.3% drop, to 803 billion euros. Official Development Assistance, a vital instrument for millions of people around the world, is thus cut 10 times more than other budget lines on average.
Beyond its symbolic significance, this budget cut will impact millions of lives. As an illustration, cutting 742 million euros from the budget of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria means 800,000 fewer lives preserved, 18 million new infections or cases across the three diseases that will not be prevented, or 1.1 million people who will not be able to access antiretroviral therapy for HIV. Other example, a 742 million euros contribution to Covax, the mechanism for an equitable repartition of Covid-19 vaccines, could have allowed it to buy between 74 and 247 million doses for low- and middle-income countries.
Numerous NGOs are denouncing France’s "lack of coherence", such as Coordination SUD, the national platform of French NGOs, which stresses that the consequences of such an announcement weigh first and foremost on populations living in poverty and in need of humanitarian assistance around the world. For ONE France, it is no longer possible to think about the future of our country without worrying about what is happening in the rest of the world. The Climate Action Network wonders how France intends to achieve its promise to devote 0.7% of its national wealth to international aid with such a drop, while Oxfam France denounces the sacrifice of international solidarity in the midst of a triple humanitarian, climate and inequality crisis, while recalling that other policy solutions, notably fiscal, are possible.
As part of the Development Engagement Lab project, Focus 2030 and its partners have been measuring French support for official development assistance since 2013. In October 2023, 61% of those surveyed said they were in favor of increasing or maintaining the existing budget.
Aide au développement réduite de 800 millions d’euros : des ONG dénoncent un manque de cohérence du gouvernement
President Macron: Don't Betray Our Global Future | Global Citizen
Aide au développement réduite de 800 millions d’euros : des ONG dénoncent un manque de cohérence du gouvernement
President Macron: Don't Betray Our Global Future | Global Citizen
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