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Higher education and research, Éric Zemmour

University tuition fees: Tuition fees for foreign students (Knafo plan, €4bn)

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.

« Fin de la gratuité des études pour les étudiants étrangers. »1

Translation by the editorsEnd of free tuition for foreign students.

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. €4bn of savings for ending free tuition for foreign students (Sarah Knafo's plan, measure 16); the October 2025 counter-budget announced 3 (« 3 milliards en décidant de faire payer leurs études aux étudiants étrangers » [“3 billion by deciding to make foreign students pay for their studies”]).

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. Measure from Sarah Knafo's plan (budget2027.fr, measure 16), which the candidate calls « la matrice de mon programme économique » [“the matrix of my economic programme”]: counted as his position. Reading adopted, the most cautious: non-EU students all pay the differentiated fees (€2,895 for a bachelor's degree, €3,941 for a master's), with no exemption, i.e. at most €0.07bn a year beyond the decree of 19 May 2026; European Union nationals remain at the national rate (EU law). Other reading: charging the full cost of studies (€12,460 per university student in 2024, Insee-DEPP), for which the text gives no scale. Static: fall in enrolments not counted.

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.

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. 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 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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