2023-07-18 10:00:01
The facade of the Court of Auditors, on February 16, 2022, in Paris. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP
The Culture Pass was launched in haste, it costs and will cost more and more, and its impact must be “assessed to reflect on potential adjustments”. These are, in essence, the main lessons of the audit conducted by the Court of Auditors, made public on Tuesday, July 18, about the creation and implementation of the Culture Pass, the main presidential commitment in terms of cultural policy.
Generalized since May 2021, this digital device – which assumes that the major obstacle to access to culture would be financial – offers all 18-year-olds an envelope of 300 euros to access the cultural activities of their choice. And, since January 2022, 200 euros have been allocated to students between the 4th class and the final year, largely in the form of a collective share managed within schools as part of artistic and cultural education. The Culture Pass has since its launch nearly 3 million young beneficiaries. 18-year-olds favor the purchase of books (more than 50% of spending), cinema tickets, concerts and musical instruments. Conversely, the collective share is mainly used to go to the show (48%).
The Court of Auditors notes that its use is “increasing due to a now assured notoriety” with young people, but judge that he is ” too early “, for lack of sufficient data, to assess the concrete effect of this Pass on cultural practices. Above all, she insists that “the public authorities are paying particular attention to this system in order to ensure that it achieves objectives that are not only quantitative; but qualitative”. And this, all the more so since it absorbs a “substantial part of the budget of the Ministry of Culture”.
Serious malfunctions
In a full year, and even before the extension announced from this start of the school year to 6th and 5th grades, the Pass represents an annual budget of 273 million euros fully paid for by the state. But, says the report, « more ambitious assumptions in terms of public action, based on a lower rate of non-recourse, with only 10% of non-registrants and 10% of unused credits, would lead to an overall cost of 327 million euros per year at cruising speed ». This sum, already significant, does not take into account, specify the magistrates, “the extensions of scope regularly announced, whether it concerns some 20,000 young French people living abroad aged 18 (i.e. a potential expenditure of 6 million) or the extension of the collective share to apprentices (who represent a potentially eligible population of 350,000 young people)”.
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