Déchiffrer 2027

FREN

State and civil service, Bruno Retailleau

Public broadcasting: €2.6bn of savings on culture and media, public broadcasting included

Direction of change: decrease, compared with current law.

The lever. Public radio and television: funding, governance, merger of companies, possible privatisation. Direction rule: ↑ higher public funding.

« Trois gisements : confier au privé ce qu’il fait mieux (5 Md€), passer trois politiques au tamis (13 Md€), supprimer les dispositifs sans résultat démontré (14 Md€). […] Culture et médias […] 2,6 […] Dotation audiovisuel public ≈ 4 Md€ ; Pass Culture, programme 361 »1

Translation by the editorsThree sources: entrust to the private sector what it does better (€5bn), put three policies through the sieve (€13bn), abolish schemes without proven results (€14bn). […] Culture and media […] 2.6 […] Public broadcasting grant ≈ €4bn; Pass Culture, programme 361

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

amount not broken down

Amount announced with no readable annual amount for this position alone: €2.6bn in 2032 for the « Culture et médias » [“Culture and media”] line, calculated on the « Dotation audiovisuel public ≈ 4 Md€ » [“Public broadcasting grant ≈ €4bn”] and the « Pass Culture, programme 361 » (press fact sheet no. 4); public broadcasting's share not given.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

Saving of €2.6bn on culture and media together (public broadcasting and Pass Culture), with no amount specific to public broadcasting: the cost schedule options concern privatisation or the end of all public funding, which the text does not provide for.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Licence fee abolished in 2022. Funding through a share of VAT allocated to the « Avances à l'audiovisuel public » account (organic law allowing it to continue beyond 2024): €3,878.3m in the PLF 2026 (−1.8%). France Télévisions €2,440.6m, Radio France 648.0, Arte France 298.1, France Médias Monde 303.9, INA 103.5, TV5 Monde 84.2.

Horizon. full year 2032, €bn/year

Limits. The gain from privatisation is a static costing: it ignores transition costs (redundancy plans, takeover of commitments, broadcasting contracts), any compensated public service obligations and the sale proceeds, which are received only once and do not count in the annual balance. “Net” convention: €126.2m of the 2026 grant offsets tax effects linked to the abolition of the licence fee, which go back to the State (€54.4m for France Télévisions, €30.3m for Radio France); the central value deducts them (3,878.3 − 126.2 ≈ €3,752m for the abolition of all funding; 2,440.6 + 648.0 − 54.4 − 30.3 ≈ €3,004m for France Télévisions and Radio France, editors' calculations), the upper bound is the gross amount. The two options overlap (overlap declared). A privatisation of “public broadcasting” with no list of the companies concerned (same reading for all candidates, rule of 18 October 2026) is costed through the option privatisation-perimetre-non-dit: at the centre and as lower bound, France Télévisions and Radio France, the two main companies (€3.0bn net, 80% of the net grant); as upper bound, all the companies (€3.88bn gross). The final amount in the initial finance act for 2026 (LFI 2026) is not verified (amendments to restore funding under discussion).

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 Bruno Retailleau

  1. avecretailleau.fr, fiches presse « Rétablir l'ordre dans les comptes publics » (12 octobre 2026), fiche n° 4, p. 6. Open the document at this page.

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