Two brand-new barracks rise on the outskirts of Toulouse for a sum that surpasses 80 million euros, even as the Court of Auditors has been calling for months for a redesign of the sector’s police map. This is the paradox that, in itself, summarizes the French paralysis on internal security: we keep building within a system that we know to be obsolete.
- The Court of Auditors, on January 13, 2025, judged the police/gendarmerie zones map to be incoherent and recommended transferring 76 police precincts to the gendarmerie
- The blockage is neither budgetary nor human, with 253,000 police and gendarmes and resources on the rise, but organizational and political, despite the gendarmerie’s subordination to the Interior Ministry since 2009
- In Toulouse, two barracks were built for more than 80 million euros while the 2020 redraw announced remained unimplemented, illustrating how these investments freeze a map that ought to be revised
- A map that hasn’t moved for decades, and yet everyone knows it
- What the Court of Auditors really wrote in 2025
- Neither money nor men: the real obstacle lies elsewhere
- Why local elected officials block a reform that no one disputes on substance
- One year on, the report still lies in a drawer: what to take away
Behind this Toulouse anecdote lies a broader, almost structural problem affecting the entire country. The distribution of policing zones between the national police and the gendarmerie has hardly evolved for decades, despite substantial demographic shifts and changes in crime patterns. A finding that everyone knows, from senior civil servants to local elected officials, but that no one dares to correct.
A map that hasn’t moved for decades, and yet everyone knows it
The current division between police and gendarmerie zones stems, in broad terms, from a time when rural France and urban France looked nothing alike today. Yet, in 80 years, cities have grown, living environments have restructured, and crime patterns have drastically changed. Nevertheless, the invisible boundary that determines whether a police station or a gendarmerie brigade intervenes at your doorstep has hardly budged.
This is not a secret kept under wraps. It has circulated for a long time in the corridors of the administration and among security experts. What has changed today is that it is now laid out in black and white, with precision, by the institution best equipped to point out the dysfunctions of public action.
What the Court of Auditors really wrote in 2025
On January 13, 2025, the Court of Auditors published an unflinching report, describing the current map of police and gendarmerie zones as incoherent. The magistrates do not settle for a mere theoretical observation: they put forward concrete recommendations. Among them, the transfer of small police precincts to the national gendarmerie, as well as placing under gendarmerie authority all municipalities situated in rural and sparsely populated departments, including their capitals.
The report even goes so far as to quantify part of its recommendations, mentioning the transfer to the gendarmerie of 76 police precincts deemed vulnerable. Rather than a dramatic and sweeping reform, the Court advocates for a logic of continuous adjustment, a way of saying that the map should live and evolve with the territories, not remain frozen for generations on end.
Neither money nor men: the real obstacle lies elsewhere
One might suppose that the blockage stems from a lack of resources. That is not the case. The interior security forces today count 253,000 police and gendarmes, and for several years have enjoyed a budget on the rise. The money is there, the manpower as well. The problem is neither financial nor human; it is organizational and, above all, political.
The gendarmerie’s subordination to the Interior Ministry, effective since 2009, should have made this map update easier. In theory, having both forces under a single umbrella simplifies arbitrations. In practice, nothing of the sort happened, to the extent that the Court of Auditors now deems it essential and urgent to carry out the necessary adjustments, sixteen years after this institutional rapprochement.
Why local elected officials block a reform that no one disputes on substance
The Toulouse example perfectly captures this French paradox. A redrawing plan had been announced in 2020 for the Toulouse metropolitan area. Three years later, no concrete changes to the map had occurred. While the file was stalling, the gendarmerie went ahead and built two barracks near Toulouse, for an estimated total of at least 80 million euros, including 50 million for the Balma project.
These investments, once completed, become obstacles to any future evolution: it is hard to redraw a map when new, costly, and recently inaugurated buildings embed an organization that was supposed to be temporary. The reform is not contested on principle, but each local actor prefers to defend their installation rather than risk the political prize of change.
One year on, the report still lies in a drawer: what to take away
More than a year after its publication, the recommendations put forward by the Court of Auditors in January 2025 have still not been implemented. And the institution does not merely lament this: it warns about the concrete consequences of inaction. The “200 Brigades” plan and the ongoing police reorganization, if pursued without beforehand revising the map, risk freezing a situation that is already deemed problematic for the long term.
In other words, the longer this drags on, the more new barracks get built and the more new devices are rolled out, the harder, or even impossible, it will become to redraw this map someday—even though it is unanimously recognized as outdated.
This dossier illustrates a well-known mechanism of French public action: a shared diagnosis, identified solutions, but a rollout hampered by local and institutional inertia. The question remains how long this report can sleep in a drawer before the map itself becomes, by virtue of not having been revised, irreversible.
