2023-11-10 18:30:08
In July 1982, in an article in Le Monde, journalist Didier Pourquery ventured the following formula: « The ideas industry is in the United States and Great Britain. In France, we practice craftsmanship. » Forty years later, the observation unfortunately remains relevant, as if soft power was still a notion ignored or exogenous to our democracy. Certainly, a small panel of French organizations labeled “think tanks” shine in France and internationally, both through the credibility of their work and their capacity for dissemination.
But, as the “report on French think tanks: information and recommendations mission » by Yves Saint-Geours, presented on October 27, 2016 to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marc Ayrault, already pointed out, the financing of our idea laboratories and the support given to organized civil society contrast with France’s ambitions, both in the field of strategic thinking and in its role as a major player in European construction.
Compared to our German counterparts (such as SWP, DGAP, Bertelsmann, Robert Bosch, Konrad Adenauer, Friedrich Ebert Stiftungen, etc.), funding for our think tanks and citizen associations working on national and European issues is limited, and in steady decline in recent years, due to disengagement from the private and public sphere.
In France, weak state support for think tanks
While the Bundestag votes each year, in a transparent manner, an allocation to major political foundations of more than 620 million euros, an increase of 110% in twenty years, we are struggling to align in France a total funding forty times lower! And these sums are distributed, without prior consultation of Parliament, in a purely discretionary manner. It should be noted that Germany is not the only country in Europe to provide massive public support for think tanks: Spain, Italy, Sweden and Austria also show strong state commitment. , representing at least 40% of the budgets of the structures concerned.
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In France, state support remains modest, while in a number of areas France’s conception of Europe and the world is often more proactive than that of our European partners, for example in matters of European sovereignty. .
By limiting the means of these associations, the State restricts its own action and influence, where these organizations can, through the entry of civil society and a form of hybrid organization located between knowledge and power, organize reflections and actions serving the general interest.
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