France’s draft 2026 Finance Bill: further cuts planned for Official Development Assistance

On October 14, 2025, the French government presented its draft Finance Bill for 2026. For the fourth time in a row, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) mission, which makes up only 0.6% of the state budget, is among those most affected.

The 2026 draft Finance Bill proposes a 704 million euros reduction in the ODA mission budget compared to the 2025 Finance Act (excluding a 134 million euros cut made by decree in April 2025), reducing it from 4.373 billion euros to 3.669 billion (-16%). Additionally, this budget proposal confirms France’s withdrawal from innovative development and climate financing since 2025 (see box below).

On average, state budget missions will be reduced by 2%. The ODA mission faces the third-largest reduction in terms of proportion (-16%), after the “Transformation and civil service” (-27%) and “Sport, youth, and associations” (-18%) missions, and the fourth-largest cut in terms of volume (-704 million euros), behind the “Labor, employment, and administration of social ministries” (-2.4 billion), “Territorial cohesion” (-894 million), and “Solidarity, integration, and equal opportunities” (-827 million) missions.

This is the fourth consecutive cut to the Official Development Assistance budget in under two years. Since 2021, when a law was passed to gradually increase funding for this policy, allocations have instead been reduced by 46%. If this trend continues, France’s total Official Development Assistance, as calculated by the OECD, could decline to 0.38% of GNI by 2026—returning to its 2016 level.

As an illustration, cutting 704 million euros from the budget of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria means 750,000 fewer lives preserved.

The cuts are heavily impacting France’s multilateral aid. Of the two main programs of the ODA mission — "Solidarity with Developing Countries" (P209), administered by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MFA), and "Economic and Financial Aid for Development" (P110), led by the Ministry of Economy and Finance — 72% of the budget cuts concern multilateral aid. This represents a 476 million euros decrease (-42%) compared to 2025. Some of the decrease in P209 credits is due to the consolidation of all MFA contributions in the areas of health, education, feminist diplomacy, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health and rights in the "Solidarity Fund for Development" program (P384). However, the payment credits for this program remain unchanged. 

The 2026 draft finance bill confirms an unprecedented reduction in humanitarian aid, despite France’s commitment to allocating one billion euros per year to this area by 2025. The allocation of 895 million euros in 2024 seemed to put France on track to meet this goal, but the government has since cut this budget by 67%. The 2026 draft budget provides only 294 million euros, 206 million less than in 2025 (-41.2%). Specifically, funding for the Humanitarian Emergency and Stabilization Fund has decreased by 26 million euros ; food aid has been cut by over 60% (80 million euros) ; and voluntary contributions to the United Nations have decreased by two-thirds, from 150 million to 50 million euros.

Support for NGOs has fallen sharply. Funding for the CSO-Initiative program, which is managed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and serves as the primary channel through which Official Development Assistance (ODA) is provided to civil society organizations (CSOs), will decrease by 18% between 2025 and 2026. Specifically, funding will fall from 132 million euros in the 2025 Finance Bill to 107 million euros in the 2026 draft finance bill. Additionally, commitment authorizations for this program will decrease by 40.7% in 2026, leading to fewer new projects in the coming years.