Ten months before the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) in Paris, the announcement of the 2024 budget from the Ministry of Sports and JOP was particularly awaited. Presented on Wednesday September 27 in the Council of Ministers, the finance bill for 2024 provides for a total envelope of 1.023 billion euros (1.930 billion if we add the “youth and community life” mission which depends on the sports budget ), compared to 1.113 billion euros in 2023.
This drop of almost 8% (90 million euros) is due to the reduction in public funds allocated to the preparation of the Games, which will drop from 295 million euros in 2023 to 134 million in 2024. The Solideo projects, the company responsible for delivering the Olympic works (athletes’ village, aquatic center, etc.), entering their final phase, the public contribution to this structure will drop to 104 million.
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Excluding the strict preparation of the JOPs, the funding received by the Ministry of Sports to carry out its missions of developing sports practice and supporting high-level sport reaches 889 million euros for the year. Olympic, compared to 828 million euros in 2023. An increase of 7.3%. « This reflects the continuation and level of government commitments for the success of public sports policies”argued the sports ministry on Wednesday.
This increase should be likely to reassure, at least temporarily, all sports stakeholders who could fear a drop-out effect as soon as the Games are over. Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was committed, on May 16 in front of the deputies of the finance committeeuntil the Olympic Games “does not in any way constitute a period of overheating that we would allow ourselves before folding the sails”.
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The budgetary trajectories included in the finance bill for 2024 nevertheless reveal a reduction of 160 million euros for sport from 2025, without detailing whether it concerns sport or youth and community life. On Wednesday, a close friend of the minister guaranteed that “budgetary commitments on public policies supported by the ministry (excluding exceptional resources linked to the Games) will be at least stable in 2025”.
He also recalled the stabilization of the number of sports technical advisors (CTS) – State agents made available to federations – whose status as civil servants had been called into question at the end of 2018. , a deep and lasting crisis with the ministry.
18 million euros for the Paris medalists
In detail, the State is continuing, within the framework of the new plan presented by the President of the Republic at the start of the school year, its support for local sports facilities, with a new envelope of 100 million euros in 2024 managed by the National Sports Agency (ANS). With national education establishments, rural areas and the thermal renovation of sports infrastructures as priorities.
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Additional credits amounting to 14.6 million euros must also be mobilized to strengthen the practice of sports in schools, in particular to go from 700 to 2,000 middle schools implementing the 2 hours of training by the start of the 2024 school year. additional weekly sports. A measure that Ms. Oudéa-Castéra wanted to extend to all establishments at the time of the Games, but which is encountering practical difficulties. Emmanuel Macron, however, announced, at the beginning of September, his desire to generalize these two additional weekly hours from 2026.
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On the high performance side, in addition to the revaluation of 7 million euros of bonuses for French Olympic and Paralympic medalists (18 million in total), specific resources of 6.7 million euros will supplement the “Winning in France” system. “. This program aims to act on marginal gains in order to optimize the performance of athletes at the time of the Games. While the federations are waiting to know precisely the amount of their envelope for the final stretch before the Olympics, it is not certain that this boost will be enough to achieve the objective of the top 5 medals assigned by Emmanuel Macron to the French delegations.
The president has also made the promotion of sport a major national cause in 2024. In the draft budget, only a little more than 10 million euros will be devoted to it. Big cause, small means? It will take more to put French people, increasingly affected by a sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity, back on the path to the sports fields.
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Credits for Pass’Sport will drop in 2024
The budgetary envelope devoted to Pass’Sport will decrease in 2024. This assistance system (50 euros) for registration in a sports structure will have 85 million euros in credits, compared to 100 million in 2022 as well as this year. It is through this position that the Ministry of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games says it has made its contribution to the 5% reduction in spending requested from all ministries, before the summer, by Matignon and Bercy.
“We are getting closer to consumed reality”, we argue to the ministry. The system is indeed struggling to take off: 1 million subscriptions in 2021, 1.2 million in 2022 out of a potential “target” of 6.7 million young people between 6 and 30 years old. And, as a result, its budget is far from having been consumed over the last two years: only a little more than 63 million euros had been spent in 2022. The ministry, however, considers that these 85 million euros “give room for maneuver to continue the increase in power of the system” which, this year, could capture “around 1.5 million young people”.
