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Higher education and research, Bruno Retailleau

University tuition fees: No more automatic fee exemption for non-European students

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

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

« Si je suis élu président de la République, il n’y aura plus de passe-droit : plus d’exonération automatique des frais d’inscription pour les étudiants extra-européens. »1

Translation by the editorsIf I am elected President of the Republic, there will be no more special privileges: no more automatic exemption from tuition fees for non-European students.

Words of Bruno Retailleau, Le JDD, entretien « Ma candidature ira jusqu’au bout » (repris sur republicains.fr), 31 May 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.

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

+€0.07bn

per year for the public accounts, new revenue.

The calculation

  • End of the exemptions from differentiated fees for non-EU students still allowed by the decree of 19 May 2026 (20% of the students concerned in 2028): Option costed by the source: a gain of €0.07bn per year.

Assumption by the editors. Reading adopted: no exemption from differentiated fees for non-European students, beyond what the decree of 19 May 2026 still allows (20% of the students concerned in 2028), i.e. at most €0.07bn a year. Other reading: the decree, which already abolishes the near-general exemption, is sufficient (status quo).

Coefficient calculated by the editors from IGF-IGESR, Modèle économique des établissements publics de l'enseignement supérieur (vie-publique): the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

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 Bruno Retailleau

  1. Le JDD, entretien « Ma candidature ira jusqu’au bout » (repris sur republicains.fr), 31 May 2026. Words of Bruno Retailleau. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (Le JDD, entretien « Ma candidature ira jusqu’au bout » (repris sur republicains.fr)).

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