Déchiffrer 2027

FREN

Early childhood and old age, Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Nurseries and childcare: Public early-childhood service, 500,000 childcare places in 5 years

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

The lever. Care for young children: nursery places, public or private nurseries, childminders, support for families, enforceable right. Direction rule: ↑ more public or subsidised childcare.

« Créer un service public de la petite enfance et ouvrir 500 000 places en crèche et modes de garde adaptés sur cinq ans »1

Translation by the editorsCreate a public early-childhood service and open 500,000 places in crèches and suitable childcare arrangements over five years

Encoding

ParameterCurrent lawProgrammeEffective date or horizon
Additional early childcare places, all types (crèches and childminders)0 places500,000 places* (outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation) (assumption by the editors, see the costing)Full year, €bn per year

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The programme does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€7.5bn* (outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation)

per year for the public accounts, new spending, range −€7.5bn to −€6.5bn.

* Outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation (measured range: 0 to 200,000 places).

The calculation

  • Additional early childcare places, all types (crèches and childminders): (500,000 − 0) ÷ 10,000 = 50 times “10,000 additional childcare places, all types”, each a cost of €0.15bn (0.13 to 0.15). Proposed value outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation (measured range: 0 to 200,000 places). Range measured by the Cour des comptes: up to 200,000 additional places (2030 target). Beyond that, linear extrapolation, flagged as such.

Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. 500,000 places in crèches and other childcare arrangements over five years, at the average cost per place across all arrangements from the Cour des comptes; beyond 200,000 places (measured range), linear extrapolation. The public early childhood service is not costed beyond these places.

Coefficient calculated by the editors from DREES, Minima sociaux 2024, fiche 34, tableau 4: the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Early childhood benefit (Prestation d'accueil du jeune enfant, Paje): €11,510m in 2025, including €7,372m for the childcare choice supplement (complément de libre choix du mode de garde) (Commission des comptes de la sécurité sociale (Social Security Accounts Committee), October 2026; the September 2025 reform of the supplement costs €0.5bn in a full year). Tax credit for childcare costs for children under 6 (CGI (General Tax Code), Art. 200 quater B): €1,737m actual in 2024, €1,799m forecast for 2025 and 2026, for 1.93 million households (PLF 2026). Funding of nurseries (Cnaf single service benefit, municipalities) and the public early childhood service are not cited in the source.

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year

Limits. The +1% of the childcare supplement (complément mode de garde) is calculated by the editors: 1% of €7.372bn (2025), €7.69bn forecast for 2027 as upper bound (CCSS, October 2026); former coefficient 0.07 (1% of €6.76bn in 2022), replaced on 18 October 2026. Childcare costs tax credit: €1,737m outturn in 2024 (lower bound), €1,799m forecast for 2025 and 2026 (centre and upper bound), instead of €1,721m (PLF 2025). Crèche places: €695m for 35,000 places, i.e. about €19,900 of public operating cost per place per year (Cour des comptes, 2024). Places of all types: €1.5bn for 100,000 places (35% in crèches, 65% with registered childminders), i.e. €15,000 per place (central and high); average public cost of an existing formal childcare place: €13,000 (low). Investment (€30,000 to €50,000 per crèche place, according to the Cour des comptes) is one-off and not counted. The Cour des comptes notes that the shortage of professionals makes these creations uncertain. Convention: the cost of a place is the gross public cost of a new place in a full year, without deducting what the childcare arrangements it replaces used to cost. The Institut Montaigne (2022) counts crèche places net of this substitution, from −€2,500 (substitution for home-based childcare) to +€5,000 per place per year (substitution for registered childminders), figures it attributes to Insee according to Le Parisien: a third-hand benchmark, with a different scope, not counted. A place that meets unmet demand replaces no subsidised arrangement.

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 Jean-Luc Mélenchon

  1. L’Avenir en commun (édition 2025), p. 21. Open the document at this page.

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