France reneges on its Official Development Assistance commitments

In the wake of a historic reduction in French official development assistance, Focus 2030 publishes its independent assessment of France’s development aid policy since 2017. Achievement of assigned objectives, planned reforms, modernization efforts, financial trajectories... Consult the report “France’s Official Development Assistance in a world of uncertainty: a fading ambition?”.

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. In addition, the Finance Bill for 2025 and its amendments propose a further 34.5% reduction in budget appropriations for the “official development assistance” mission, suggesting a cut of almost 2 billion euros in 2025. Analysis and CSOs reactions.

A 50-year-old unfulfilled promise postponed for another five years

France is currently the world’s fourth-largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA). In 2023, it allocated 0.50% of its gross national income (GNI), or 14,3 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 as well as budget cuts for ODA in 2024 and 2025 cuts represent a shortfall of almost 22 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.

Moreover, France’s ODA has already declined in 2023 for the first time in seven years. According to preliminary data from the OECD, France’s ODA is 11% lower in 2023 than in 2022. Compared with the trajectory envisaged by the 2021 programming law, which set a target of 0.61% of France’s GNI dedicated to ODA in 2023, compared with 0.50% in reality, this represents a shortfall of more than 3.4 billion dollars for international solidarity in 2023.

2024: a new ODA cut, 10 times larger than other budget cuts

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.

2025 Finance Bill: a historic reduction in ODA estimated at €1 billion

The Finance Bill for 2025, published on October 10, 2024, and its proposed amendements, made public on October 27, 2024, envisage historic cuts for several budget lines. The Official Development Assistance mission is the most affected of these, with a planned reduction of 34.5% between 2024 and 2025. The reduction, applied to payment credits for 2024 (5.76 billion euros), should reach 1.985 billion euros.

In addition, the bill provides for the end of innovative ODA financing. Part of the revenue from the tax on financial transactions and the solidarity tax on airline tickets (738 million euros) was previously allocated each year to the Solidarity Fund for Development (FSD) to support France’s financing of multilateral instruments (Global Fund, IFFIm, Unitaid, GCF, GPE). The Finance Bill formalizes the abolition of the FSD : all proceeds from the two taxes will now be paid into the general budget, thus abolishing the only instrument that directly supported ODA on an ongoing basis each year.

The FSD is replaced by a new budget line of the same name, which adds 738 million euros in payment credits to the ODA mission in 2025, artificially limiting the fall in payment credits to 22% (-1.2 billion euros).

At a time when multilateral cooperation and international solidarity are more crucial than ever to meeting global challenges, these political decisions appear to run counter to current needs. As Oxfam points out, “with this budget trajectory, most of the objectives set out in black and white in the 2021 orientation and programming law will not be met”.

French NGOs react

Following the February 2024 cuts, numerous NGOs denounced France’s "lack of coherence", such as Coordination SUD, the national platform of French NGOs, which stressed 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 wondered 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 denounced 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 feasible.

Meanwhile, a group of 25 MPs from the majority and opposition parties have also condemned the successive cuts to the official development assistance budget in an opinion piece published in Le Nouvel Obs. The MPs called for better collection of the tax on financial transactions in order to release new resources to meet France’s ODA commitments and reach the 0.7% target.

In the wake of revelations concerning further ODA cuts in the Finance Bill for 2025, civil society organizations and development actors have once again risen to condemn cuts to a budget that is “vital”. In an article published by Jeune Afrique, 83 NGO leaders called on France not to set a bad example in terms of public development aid, and to reaffirm its commitment to international cooperation. In response to these cuts, the NGOs Action Santé Mondiale, Global Citizen and ONE called in Le Monde for more funding to be mobilized via a strengthening of the tax on financial transactions, in order to improve France’s public finances and increase its support for the most vulnerable populations. In addition, Global Citizen launched a petition calling France to "stop catastrophic cuts to life-saving aid".

In a press release, Oxfam France denounced the “serious cuts in funding”, “dramatic in view of the humanitarian needs of the poorest populations”, and which “avoid making the ultra-rich contribute”. In an op-ed published on the occasion of the Francophonie Summit, Oxfam also accused France of hypocrisy: the government is announcing budget cuts to ODA at a time when 70 million French-speaking people - equivalent to the population of France - are in need of emergency humanitarian aid.

The NGO ONE France called on Emmanuel Macron to stop treating international solidarity as a “budgetary adjustment variable”, noting that the ODA budget preserves millions of lives around the world every year. ONE has also invited citizens to call on the Minister for the Budget and Public Accounts to preserve solidarity taxes in France, by sending a pre-written e-mail (in french) to be completed at this address.

In response to the abolition of the Solidarity Fund for Development, Olivier Bruyeron, President of Coordination SUD, pointed out in an article in Libération that this mechanism not only guaranteed the sustainability of funding, but also enabled two sectors benefiting from globalization (finance and aviation) to contribute to international solidarity. He added that its abolition would weaken the official development assistance budget.

Budget decisions at odds with French people’s aspirations

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.

Further reading

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

Documents to download

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