The French equivalent of the National Audit Office, the Cour des Comptes, has found several faults with France’s Culture Pass, which gives 18-year-olds €300 to spend on just about any cultural activity or product they wish over two years. The scheme has seen “its spending soar, does not meet its social objectives and needs governance reform”, the Cour said in a report.
A total of 4.2 million young people in France have benefited from 36 million purchases since the scheme was launched in 2019, and was extended throughout the country in 2021. It brought in the 15-17 age group both individually and through schools in 2002.
Even if it has not reached all sectors of society, it is an “undeniable quantitative success”, Cour president Pierre Moscovici told reporters on Tuesday. Altogether 84% of 18-year-olds have used the pass, compared to 68% among the disadvantaged segment of the age group. Overall, pass-holders have spent an average of €257 out of the €300, of which 42% to 55% has gone on books. Contrary to received ideas, Manga has halved its share of that from 40% in 2021 to only 20% this year, Moscovici added.
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Total spending on the pass has shot up from €93m in 2020 to €244m this year, or €324m if the schools’ share is included. It is still financed up to 95% from public funds, whereas the idea at the beginning was for private sector suppliers to foot the bill, Moscovici noted.
Possible remedies to the problems include reducing the per capita €300, means-testing recipients’ families, targeting disadvantaged geographical areas, excluding the popular escape games from the menu and shifting the management from a private company to the culture ministry.
Another idea, suggested by outgoing culture minister Rachida Dati, is to reserve a quota for the performing arts, which have attracted scant attention from pass-holders, and have not been helped by operators’ reluctance to participate.
The report does not come as a surprise to Guillaume Husson, director of the French Booksellers Association (Syndicat de la Librairie Française, SLF). “I regret that like other official reports, it sees the bottle as half empty rather than half full,” he told The Bookseller.
Young people are reading less, but books are still a major beneficiary of the pass, which “is far from nothing”, he added. “It is regrettable that the objective is to reduce the cost, and that the flaws (in the scheme) are used to justify it.”
