France devotes more than 2 billion euros per year to the international promotion of the French-speaking world, but struggles to measure the effectiveness of this effort. In its report – more measured than usual – on this public policy published on August 31, the Court of Auditors considers that the dispersion of actors, the fragmentation of responsibilities and the weakness of indicators prevent the results from being appreciated. Between 2018 and 2024, the cost of this policy increased by 6.2%. The number of French speakers is estimated between 345 and 396 million in 2026 depending on the counting methods used.
Given the scope and complexity of the field, the Court was interested in three subjects: the teaching of French abroad, digital technology and French as a working language.
France has a dense network of cooperation and cultural action services, French Institutes and some 830 Alliances françaises where French courses are provided. But, in the Institutes and Alliances, the number of learners and the volume of hours taught have still not returned to their level before the health crisis. Above all, the Court asks to review the objective set by Emmanuel Macron in 2018 for French education abroad. The Agency for the Teaching of French Abroad (AEFE) today welcomes 402,000 students in 612 establishments: the target of 700,000 students in 2030 now appears “out of reach” and must be lowered. French-speaking university sectors also remain insufficiently identified and the issue of the French-speaking world remains too little present in university and scientific cooperation.
Digital constitutes the second “subject”. It occupies a growing place in the policy of promoting French. The French Institute, TV5MONDE and France Médias Monde develop content and services accessible online. France Médias Monde recorded in 2025 some 4.8 billion video launches on its various digital environments. But the offer remains penalized by inequalities in access to the Internet and especially by a lack of visibility of content in French on search engines and platforms. The Court therefore recommends the development of a “discoverability” strategy for French-speaking content and also proposes the creation, within the framework of multilateral Francophonie, of a French-speaking disinformation observatory.
Artificial intelligence makes this question even more pressing. Corpora of texts, lexical bases and other digital resources in French useful for training artificial intelligence tools remain dispersed among numerous players. The Cité de la francophonie in Villers-Cotterêts hosts the European consortium ALT-EDIC and the national and French-speaking LANGU: IA project, supported by France 2030. The latter must in particular bring together researchers, companies and institutions around language technologies (major language models, etc.) and increase the presence of French-speaking content in the major language models. The Court invites public authorities to further structure this ecosystem in order to improve the place of French in artificial intelligence tools.
Third weakness: the decline of French as a working language. In international organizations, the Court observes a growing gap between its official status and its daily use, dominated by English. French initiatives in favor of multilingualism exist but are insufficiently monitored and their results rarely measured. The Court therefore recommends indicators to assess its effectiveness and more systematic action with international institutions.
The Court makes ten recommendations: make objectives more realistic, consolidate data, measure results, structure digital action and develop professional uses of French. For the authors of the report, the management of the policy for the international promotion of the Francophonie remains based on a logic of means rather than results; they call for a strengthening of management and measurement of the effects of the actions undertaken.
The report does not avoid the crucial question of literary property and the fair remuneration of creators but does not devote lengthy developments to it. However, it is an equally important issue: there is no point in promoting the digital presence of French-speaking content if this content is from Wikipedia.
