Country Profiles
France
Context
In 2022, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as president for 5 years. Since then, he was governing with only a relative majority at the National Assembly, which was the first time in more than 60 years. After the French far-right came in first place in the 2024 European elections, President Macron dissolved the National Assembly. The general elections resulted in the victory of the leftist coalition (NFP) over the far-right (placed second with a record number of seats in the assembly) and the presidential party.

However, Macron refused to appoint a Prime Minister from the left majority, and instead chose to name Michel Barnier from the conservative right party (LR), marking a tacit alliance with the far-right (RN) as he picked a candidate he knew they would endorse. The new conservative government announced in October 2024 massive cuts in the 2025 ODA budget. After three months in office, the new government was ousted, leading to the appointment of centrist François Bayrou as a successor, the fourth French prime minister in 2024.
On the international scene, President Macron still seems quite influential, and he maintained his control over international affairs in the new government. France keeps promoting feminist foreign policies on the international stage.
Policies & funding

France adopted its National Law (programmatic act) on Development in 2021. The text refers explicitly to the country’s feminist diplomacy and has a mainstream objective on gender equality. Free and equal access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services is one of the priorities of the law, with a specific indicator on modern contraception. However, the scope of the law ends in 2025, and it is very unlikely that a new one will be voted in the next few months.
France also committed to dedicate 75% of its annual ODA budget to programmes with gender equality as a principal or significant objective (DAC 1 or 2) and 20% with gender equality as a principal objective (DAC 2) by 2025.
The High Council for Gender Equality was re-appointed in April 2022. Its international commission, co-chaired by the French Countdown member Equipop, was in charge of the official evaluation of the 2018-2022 International Gender Equality Strategy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It also played a key role in the drafting of the new feminist foreign policy strategy expected to come out in early 2025 (TBC). This strategy should contain specific measures on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
The 2023-2027 SRHR international strategy was launched on March 8, 2023 by the Foreign Affairs Minister, which embraces SRHR as a cornerstone of French feminist diplomacy. The Global Health strategy, which commits to addressing gender equality and SRHR, was launched by three Ministers in October 2023.
Most of the French financial commitments to SRHR come from the Generation Equality Forum (Beijing+25) that was held in Paris in 2021. France is particularly involved in the SRHR action coalition. In that context, the country committed to allocate an additional 100 million Euros to SRHR over five years, with the following breakdown: 90 million Euros to UNFPA Supplies, 5 million to the SEMA initiative, and 5 million Euros to the ODAS programme for access to safe abortion. The government also committed to dedicate half of its pledge to the Global Partnership for Education (333 million Euros total) to girls’ education and to participate in the launch of the Partnership Forum on Comprehensive Sexuality Education led by UNFPA-UNESCO (no amount mentioned). In line with these commitments, France significantly increased its support to both SRH/FP and SRHR between 2022 and 2023, as shown in the tracking analysis. The country further invested in new programmes led by Unitaid, having disbursed significant amounts that will cover several years.
Commitments made at the GEF were however compromised by huge ODA budget cuts at the beginning of 2024, affecting several multilateral organisations. In particular, France’s 2024 contributions to UNFPA have been significantly cut from flagship projects and geographical areas such as Ukraine, the DRC and Jordan. New ODA cuts were announced in the future budget for 2025.
France remains an important diplomatic ally for the promotion of SRHR in multilateral spaces. Moreover, the country is an important voting member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM).