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Higher education and research, Marine Le Pen

University tuition fees: Abolition of the CVEC, « un gain immédiat de 105 € » [“an immediate gain of €105”] per student

Direction of change: abolition of a scheme, compared with current law.

The lever. Fees paid by students at public universities: amount, adjustment according to income or nationality. Direction rule: ↑ higher fees.

« Je pense notamment aux jeunes, lycéens, étudiants et jeunes actifs. […] [Cette trajectoire] prévoit aussi des droits nouveaux, notamment la suppression de la CVEC, cotisation pour la vie étudiante et de campus, soit un gain immédiat de 105 €. »1

Translation by the editorsI am thinking in particular of young people, upper secondary school pupils, students and young workers. […] [This trajectory] also provides for new rights, notably the abolition of the CVEC, the student and campus life contribution, i.e. an immediate gain of €105.

Words of Marine Le Pen, Chaîne YouTube officielle de Marine Le Pen, « La trajectoire financière de mon quinquennat », conférence de presse (vidéo, transcription de la rédaction), 6 October 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.

No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.

Encoding

Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The cited source does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€0.2bn

per year for the public accounts, revenue cut.

The calculation

  • Abolition of the student and campus life contribution (CVEC): Option costed by the source: a cost of €0.17bn per year.

The €105 cited by the candidate is the amount paid per student, not a total cost. The RN's 2026 counter-budget (23 October 2025, p. 7) on the contrary planned to « Affecter la CVEC (contribution à la vie étudiante et de campus) au budget général » [“Allocate the CVEC (student and campus life contribution) to the general budget”], for €0.170bn in revenue: the most recent source is used.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Order of 19 April 2019: national fees of €178 for a bachelor's (licence), €254 for a master's and €397 for a doctorate in 2025-2026. Grant holders are exempt. Fees bring in about €500m a year, i.e. 2.7% of institutions' resources. Non-EU students: differentiated fees (€2,895 for a bachelor's, €3,941 for a master's); at the start of the 2024 academic year, of 111,400 students within their scope, 100,400 were fully or partly exempt and 11,100 paid the full rate (SIES); Decree No. 2026-385 of 19 May 2026 lowers the share that can be exempted to 30% at the start of the 2026 academic year, 25% in 2027 and 20% in 2028 (ministerial answer, AN (National Assembly), August 2026).

Horizon. full year 2032, €bn/year

Limits. The €500m includes non-national fees (university-specific diplomas, non-EU students), so making national degrees alone free costs less. Benchmark: the Institut Montaigne (2022), based on the Cour des comptes, costs free national degrees at universities (excluding engineering schools, 2018-2019 fees) at €342.2m of theoretical fees, minus €112.5m already compensated by the State for grant holders, i.e. about €0.23bn. This benchmark is not counted: the Cour des comptes report could not be opened, and nothing in the sources read indicates that the €500m of institutions' revenue includes the compensation for grant holders. An increase brings in less if the number of exempt grant holders rises, or if the State simultaneously cuts the public service operating grant. In that case, the gain goes to the State and not to the universities: the position specifies this. Option fin-exonerations-droits-differencies (editors' calculation, 18 October 2026): without any exemption, differentiated fees would bring in €334m in 2022-2023 (theoretical yield, Cour des comptes, March 2025); the decree of 19 May 2026 allows at most 20% to be exempted from 2028: ending all exemptions therefore brings in at most 20% × €334m, about €0.07bn per year, as university revenue. Static: the fall in enrolments that higher fees would cause is not counted. The text of the decree could not be read (Légifrance inaccessible): the 20% ceiling comes from a published ministerial answer and from the specialist press. Option suppression-cvec: €170m paid in 2023-2024 by about 1.7 million non-grant-holding students (Cour des comptes). The ceiling set in the finance act was €177m in 2023 and 2024. The cost is the same whether or not the State compensates the Crous and the institutions: the public revenue disappears. The CVEC (student and campus life contribution) is paid across all higher education, not just at university.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Marine Le Pen

  1. Chaîne YouTube officielle de Marine Le Pen, « La trajectoire financière de mon quinquennat », conférence de presse (vidéo, transcription de la rédaction), 6 October 2026. Words of Marine Le Pen. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (Chaîne YouTube officielle de Marine Le Pen, « La trajectoire financière de mon quinquennat », conférence de presse (vidéo, transcription de la rédaction)).

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