The government will quantify aid to businesses each year, estimated at 166 billion euros in 2024

The government published this Tuesday, October 13, its first official figures for public aid to businesses, estimated at 166 billion euros in 2024 in their broadest sense, an exercise that it promises to renew each year. He launched this project at the end of 2025 in response to a Senate commission of inquiry, which deplored the absence of a “transversal legal definition of public aid to businesses”. In the absence of an official figure, the senators had estimated this aid at 211 billion euros for 2023 in the broad sense and at 108 billion in the strict sense.

Bercy retained a definition resulting from a consultation carried out by the High Commission for Planning. Any aid that mobilizes money for the benefit of a company without equivalent compensation is included in its calculation. From there, two figures arise according to the interpretations of the different aids. The first, of almost 60 billion euros, only includes “aid for which there is absolutely no doubt”, Bercy explained during a press point. The second is 166 billion euros if we aim broader, mainly by including general reductions in employer contributions (65 billion).

27 billion euros in tax benefits

The first set includes 27 billion euros in tax benefits (including 8 for the research tax credit), 24 billion euros in subsidies, particularly for the employment of apprentices or in support of renewable energies, and nearly 4 billion euros in financial aid, such as loan guarantees. Bercy explains the gap with the senators' figures first by the reference years, 2023 being part of “the years where there was a certain number of crisis aids for the benefit of businesses”. Above all, the government does not count the financing from Bpifrance granted on market conditions “in the form of loans, guarantees or direct investments”, when the Senate withheld 41 billion euros of interventions from the public bank.

The government's finance bill (PLF) for 2027, the examination of which begins Tuesday in the hemicycle of the National Assembly, plans to make this publication of the figures for public aid to businesses compulsory each year. However, it will be based on “final executed data”, Bercy specified, hence a two-year delay, the figures published Tuesday relating to 2024. Bercy also promises that this census will serve as a basis for a regular evaluation of aid by the High Commission for Planning.