What the French presidential election could mean for development aid

As the first round of France’s presidential election approaches on April 10, development actors say the outcome will have a significant impact on the country’s approach to overseas aid and multilateralism. Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in the polls, has presided over a historic increase in France’s official development assistance. He is widely seen as having moved France toward greater multilateral engagement, as well as greater partnership and less paternalism in its relations with its former colonies. In sharp contrast, Macron’s closest rival favors a more self-interested, and less multilateral, approach. Just days before the first round of the elections, Macron’s support in opinion polls stood at 27%, with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen following at 22%. Although Macron is still expected to win a second term, Le Pen has been closing in on his lead and is projected to give him a tough fight in the second-round vote on April 24. Development aid is rarely the center of attention during election campaigns in Europe, and this one is no different. "There is hardly any mention of development policy in parties’ manifestos, or in the debates, not even for Macron to boast about his track record,” said Mikaela Gavas, co-director of the Center for Global Development’s development cooperation in Europe program. "This election is being fought on domestic issues." But that's not to say the outcome won’t have a big impact on aid. “The serious threat to development aid and France’s standing in the world as a key development actor comes with the far-right candidates, [Éric] Zemmour and Le Pen,” Gavas said. Le Pen and her far-right rival Éric Zemmour, who is polling at 9%, have put the goals of limiting immigration and fighting Islamism at the center of their campaigns. Those two candidates, alongside conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse, who is polling at 9%, plan to make foreign aid conditional on recipient countries’ willingness to take back any of their citizens residing undocumented in France. While Zemmour and Pécresse have spoken openly about the issue, Le Pen has largely steered clear of the topic during her campaign. But asked in December about the case of citizens from the Comoros Islands staying undocumented in France, Le Pen said that if elected, she would use harsh economic and diplomatic measures to force governments to repatriate their citizens. “Not a penny of official development assistance nor money transferred by their citizens [remittances]” would be allowed, she said. “Believe me, they’ll come to the negotiating table pretty fast.” The remaining front-running challenger to Macron is far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has about 16% support in the polls. He is a strong supporter of development aid and wants the crushing debt of the lowest-income countries restructured. He also wants French assistance transformed so that it benefits civil society, instead of “the interests of oligarchic regimes and companies interested in public-private partnerships.” But contrary to Macron, Mélenchon does not look particularly favorably on multilateral institutions. For example, similar to Le Pen and Zemmour, he wants France to leave NATO’s integrated military command — even if he and Le Pen put the demand on hold following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When he stood for election in 2017, he pledged to withdraw France from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, although he hasn’t repeated the pledge this time around. France has strengthened its development agenda under Macron, who signaled his intention to reshape the country's policy toward the global south soon after he was elected president. Early on, he pledged that France, already the world’s fifth-largest donor, would meet the global goal of allocating 0.7% of gross national income to official development assistance. Last summer, France adopted a law — the Program and Orientation Bill on Solidarity-Based Development and the Fight Against Global Inequalities — which committed the country to meeting the target by 2025. That would mean a $7.6 billion increase in ODA compared to France’s 2021 spending of $19.2 billion, according to Donor Tracker. “That’s huge,” said Fabrice Ferrier, director of Focus 2030, a Paris-based research and advocacy group supporting sustainable development. By contrast, Zemmour hopes to halve the aid budget, but among other candidates, the move to increase aid has been uncontroversial. On other issues, too, there is broad consensus. The candidates all support increased spending to support health systems in lower-income countries — although only Mélenchon has come out in favor of temporarily dropping patent protections to allow those countries to produce their own COVID-19 vaccines. There is also wide support for the current government’s prioritization of gender equality. Under Macron a fund was created to channel aid to NGOs promoting women’s equality. And last summer’s aid law stipulates that 75% of funding must go to the direct or indirect promotion of gender equality by 2025. Again with the exception of Zemmour, that approach has ruffled few feathers. Even Pécresse has come out strongly in favor. Other elements of Macron’s approach to diplomacy have proven more controversial. Under his leadership, France has undertaken a number of initiatives to confront and make amends for the injustices of France’s colonial history, especially in Africa. This has included moves to return plundered artworks and the opening of archives to allow the writing of more honest histories of French involvement in such brutal episodes as Algeria’s war of independence and the Rwandan genocide. “The serious threat to development aid and France’s standing in the world as a key development actor comes with the far-right candidates, Zemmour and Le Pen.” --— Mikaela Gavas, development cooperation in Europe program co-director, Center for Global Development “Macron has gone further than past presidents in recognizing France's history,” said Hugo Petitjean, a senior consultant at SEEK Development, a Berlin-based consulting firm. Those efforts are largely opposed by Zemmour, the most far-right candidate, who wants to "put an end to colonial repentance.” At the same time, many feel France has not gone far enough in applying a more progressive approach in its relations with the global south. The “weak point” of France’s policies, Ferrier said, is that it still often supports dictators, for example in Egypt and Chad. “You may have principles, but you still have interests," he said. While Macron has boosted France’s commitment to global development, there is more that civil society groups would like to see in the likely event that he is reelected. For example, efforts to modernize the country’s foreign aid are only slowly moving to strengthen transparency and accountability, according to an assessment by Focus 2030. Documents detailing the use of funds and the results achieved remain difficult to access and decipher. Furthermore, less than 10% of aid is directed to the lowest-income nations, with 60% going to middle-income countries, although the Program and Orientation Bill aimed to address that issue, too. And despite growing financial support for civil society organizations, only 6.5% of French aid is channeled through them, compared to 15% on average among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in 2019. Similarly, while Macron has increased the country’s involvement in multilateral action — notably by hosting the replenishment conferences of the Green Climate Fund, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Global Partnership for Education, and by initiating innovative conferences such as the One Planet Summit — critics say that France has been slow to provide adequate financing for these multilateral programs. So while a victory for Macron would be viewed optimistically by development actors, they say there is more they would want to see from a second term for France’s development reform.