Evaluation of the national recovery plan France Relance - Summary of the final report

From a short-term perspective, part of the dynamism in employment since 2020 is attributable to the recovery plan. This is shown by simulations based on the ThreeME macroeconomic model, but also by two ex-post evaluations commissioned by France Stratégie. According to a study by the OFCE (a French economic policy think tank), nearly 100,000 jobs would have been created in 2022 by the €10 billion of measures targeted at renovation. The study by the French Institute of Public Policy (IPP) suggests that the exceptional support for apprenticeships would have generated 80,000 new jobs in 2020.

Favourable effects have also been demonstrated in terms of CO2eq emissions. According to the IPP, which focused its analysis on one scheme, €400 million in subsidies for decarbonisation in industry would have helped to reduce CO2 emissions from the facilities concerned by around one million tonnes. The vehicle incentive (which was increased by the recovery plan and cost €1 billion in 2022) would, for its part, help to increase the share of electric vehicles in new vehicle sales by 3.3 points and reduce annual emissions from new vehicles by around 90,000 tonnes. With regard to “MaPrimeRénov’” (MPR) and the energy renovation of public buildings (REBP), which represented an equivalent budget cost − around €4 billion − we were unable to obtain the actual consumption data needed to evaluate them ex post (in particular to take account of the rebound effect). If the theoretical energy and CO2 savings are calculated, based on information provided by the project leaders (for REBP) or estimated on the basis of ADEME scales according to the actions declared (for MPR), they are around ten times higher for MPR than for REBP. Even if this result were to be confirmed on the basis of real data, this would obviously not mean that subsidising the renovation of public buildings should be stopped, as their self-financing capacity is very low, unlike the household investments subsidised by MPR, and part of the subsidised renovation of public buildings has broader aims than decarbonisation.

It has thus been shown, to a certain extent, that it is possible to put in place a recovery plan aimed at stimulating activity in the short term, without abandoning more structural objectives, with measures to support the productive fabric and its decarbonisation. Although the committee is bringing its work to a close, certain research projects financed by France Stratégie will continue and will be published in 2024 (notably on the reduction in production taxes and on the macroeconomic impact of the recovery plan).