Friday, the day after the presentation of the Barnier government’s first budget, Rachida Dati took advantage of a forum in Le Monde to suggest adjustments, after reports pointing out the limits of the system. The minister first wishes to adjust the amount offered to young people. “Without renouncing the universality of the system, we must further assume that the Culture Pass is intended to correct inequalities in destiny”, she underlines, by giving “more to young people of modest means, without neglecting the middle classes” .
She also wants to put an end to self-service which allows young people to spend their grant as they wish. A part will have to be devoted to bookings for live shows, largely shunned by beneficiaries who only devote one percent of their expenses to it.
Savings
So far, young people favor purchases of books, including a large proportion of manga, and cinema, for three quarters of spending. This reform of the Culture Pass, which part of the sector was impatiently awaiting, should make it possible to “do better with less”, we argue on rue de Valois.
With 4.45 billion euros allocated (strict renewal of the amount allocated by the initial finance law last year), the Ministry of Culture considers itself relatively spared by the budgetary effort requested in 2025 but sees in the Pass Culture an important source of savings. Launched in 2019-2020, the system has benefited more than 3.4 million people since its generalization in 2021, affecting a large majority of each age group.
210 million per year
A helping hand, the checks made to young people cost some 210 million euros per year. However, many cultural actors criticize the Pass, which is very greedy in public money, for missing its target by showering everyone, even those who already have the means or the habit of consuming culture.
And not to encourage young people to go to shows or works to which they would not have turned otherwise, inflating the sales of the major cultural industries, such as the publishers of New Romance works (love fictions embellished with suspense and eroticism) whose sales are exploding, rather than fragile structures. To remedy this, first reforms have already been carried out, with the State creating a “collective share” spent via teachers.
“Disavowal”
But “the individual share still remains, too often, an instrument of cultural consumption and social reproduction,” notes the minister in her column, relying on two government reports. She therefore wishes to reduce the portion directly paid to young people in favor of sums which make it possible to improve “the diversification of audiences and practices”. “The mass is said for the Culture Pass”, judges the academic and cultural economist Jean-Michel Tobelem, who sees it as “a disavowal” of President Macron.
“Many people did not want to accept the idea that the Culture Pass was not achieving its objectives, until the situation became untenable” budgetarily, he regrets. He calls for this reform to be accompanied by support for actors such as small bookstores, MJCs and popular education. Sociologist at Cerlis, specialist in the cultural practices of adolescents, Tomas Legon also sees the end of the original spirit of the Culture Pass.
