Thirty-three billion euros. That is the amount the French state dedicates each year to what it discreetly calls “territorial cohesion,” without being able to establish a precise bilan or even draw up a simple dashboard. This is the finding laid out by the Cour des comptes in its annual public report, echoed by L’Express—a document that arrives at a moment when public finances are under close scrutiny. Behind this administrative formula lies a stacking of schemes, agencies, and front offices that, it seems, no one truly masters the overall logic of. How did we arrive at such a level of dispersion, and above all, what exactly is being financed with this public money?
- The Cour des comptes estimates 33 billion euros per year in territorial cohesion spending, of which 88% is allocated to housing allowances and emergency accommodation.
- Despite security budgets rising (+33% for the state, +41% for municipal police between 2016 and 2024), crime increased by 6.5% over the same period.
- The report points to vacant social housing while applicants wait for years, as well as overcrowded middle schools beside underutilized establishments.
- When the State and local authorities fund the same project twice
- Overcrowded middle schools beside empty establishments
- Vacant social housing while families wait
- Security, duplications and overlapping schemes
When the State and local authorities fund the same project twice
The first striking figure is €18.5 billion, written in black and white in the State budget under the line “territorial cohesion.” To this amount are added €15 billion of derogatory tax expenditures, these niches and exemptions that, though not appearing as direct spending, ease the public purse just as much. Added together, these two envelopes reach the famous €33 billion annual figure cited above. But the Cour des comptes takes the demonstration further: a large part of this windfall actually finances something entirely different from what its label suggests, since 88% of the sum goes to housing assistance and emergency shelter.
This imbalance alone illustrates the impossibility of knowing the real total cost of the territorial policy. Between the central state, the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion, ADEME, the National Agency for Urban Renovation and a multitude of other actors, credits cross, overlap, and sometimes are financed twice without any overarching coordination to bring order to this maze. A sign of this dilution is that the operator supposedly responsible for ensuring this coordination has seen its staff shrink: 340 full-time equivalents in 2026, after a drop of 18 posts from 2025 and 21 posts the previous year, equating to more than 11% of staff vanishing in two years. It is hard, under these conditions, to steer anything.
Des collèges surchargés à côté d’établissements vides
The report also delves into the school map, revealing a striking mismatch between the location of schools and the demographic reality of the territories. In some urban areas, middle schools operate at fever pitch, accommodating far more students than they should, while just a few kilometers away other establishments show vacant places that remain desperately unfilled. This poor distribution is not merely a matter of comfort: it reflects an inability to anticipate population movements and to adjust the school supply accordingly.
Even more troubling, the Court points to the maintenance of rural institutions whose enrollments continue to fall year after year, without any serious plan to close or merge them. The result: the cost per pupil soars in these under-attended structures, a budgetary paradox that weighs on public finances without guaranteeing a higher quality of teaching. We keep the walls up, for lack of a way to manage the flows.
Des logements sociaux vides pendant que des familles attendent
Social housing perhaps offers the most striking illustration of this two-speed territorial policy. On one side, homes remain vacant, for lack of applicants meeting the criteria or the proposed locations. On the other, thousands of applicants wait, sometimes for years, without obtaining a solution suited to their circumstances. This paradox, the Court of Audit does not mince words about, reveals a system deemed heavy and largely inefficient, incapable of matching the available supply to the real needs on the ground.
In response to this finding, the recommendation put forward by the financial magistrates seems almost self-evident: systematically verify the alignment between the proposed housing and the actual preferences of beneficiaries. An obvious principle which, if not implemented, continues to generate both human and financial waste, even as the housing crisis remains a sensitive issue for many French households.
Sécurité, doublons et dispositifs qui se marchent dessus
Security constitutes another illuminating facet of this report. Between 2016 and 2024, the State’s security budget jumped by 33% to reach €24.4 billion, while municipal police resources rose by 41%, to €2.3 billion. Yet, during the same period, recorded crime actually increased by 6.5%. More money spent does not obviously translate into greater effectiveness, and the Court highlights a distribution problem: staff are not necessarily allocated where needs are most acute, some departments heavily affected by crime showing a police-per-capita ratio lower than much calmer areas.
This imbalance is, in truth, only the reflection of a deeper malaise that runs through the entire French territorial policy: the multiplication of similar programs funded by different levels of government, without consultation or a shared vision. State, agencies, regions, departments and communes advance too often on their own, creating duplicates, delays and a general dilution of resources. The GDP per capita, ranging from €32,652 in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté to €69,288 in Île-de-France, a ratio of more than two to one, reminds us that decades of targeted policies have not sufficed to significantly reduce these territorial gaps. In the face of this tangle of schemes and funding that has become almost illegible, the Cour des comptes now recommends reassessing the entire set of cohesion and territorial attractiveness policies.
This report, by providing a meticulous inventory of a system at the end of its tether, raises a question that goes far beyond the budgetary framework: can we continue to multiply front desks and actors without ever providing ourselves with the means to seriously evaluate their effectiveness? At a moment when every euro of public money is scrutinized, the answer could well determine the credibility of the entire French territorial policy for the years to come.
