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State and civil service, Éric Zemmour

Public broadcasting: Privatise public broadcasting (Knafo plan)

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

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

« Privatisation de l’audiovisuel public. »1

Translation by the editorsPrivatisation of public broadcasting.

Words of Sarah Knafo, MEP, Reconquête, budget2027.fr, « 140 milliards d’économies par an : le plan de Sarah Knafo » (page lue le 13 octobre 2026), 13 October 2026. Words of an associate of the candidate: they do not formally commit the candidate.

Link to the candidacy: Éric Zemmour adopts this plan as his own: « Nous, avec Sarah Knafo, nous voulons faire 140 milliards d'euros de baisses » [“We, with Sarah Knafo, want to make 140 billion euros of cuts”] (BFMTV, 17 September 2026).

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

+€4bn

per year, gain for the public accounts. « 4 Md€ + cession d’actifs » [“€4bn + sale of assets”] (Sarah Knafo's plan, measure 21).

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

+€3bn

per year for the public accounts, saving, range +€3bn to +€3.9bn.

The calculation

  • Privatisation of « l'audiovisuel public » [“public broadcasting”] with no specified scope: at least France Télévisions and Radio France (€3.0bn net), at most all the companies (€3.88bn gross), annual budgetary gain excluding sale proceeds: Option costed by the source: a gain of €3bn (3 to 3.88) per year.

Assumption by the editors. Measure from Sarah Knafo's plan (budget2027.fr), which the candidate calls « la matrice de mon programme économique » [“the matrix of my economic programme”]: counted as his position. Scope not stated, read as for all: at least France Télévisions and Radio France (€3.0bn net, central value and lower bound), at most all the companies (€3.88bn). Transition costs, any compensated public service obligations and the one-off proceeds of the sales are not counted.

Coefficient calculated by the editors from AN, rapport spécial PLF 2026, Médias, livre et industries culturelles ; Avances à l'audiovisuel public (D. Masséglia): the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

Figure announced by the candidate: no gap calculated: costing based on an assumption by the editors.

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 Éric Zemmour

  1. budget2027.fr, « 140 milliards d’économies par an : le plan de Sarah Knafo » (page lue le 13 octobre 2026), 13 October 2026. Words of Sarah Knafo, MEP, Reconquête. Words of an associate of the candidate: they do not formally commit the candidate. Read the source (budget2027.fr, « 140 milliards d’économies par an : le plan de Sarah Knafo » (page lue le 13 octobre 2026)).

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