The Third Sector in France

Abstract

Abstract In France, like in other Western European countries, the third sector has been on a steady increase during the last decades. Similar to the situation in Germany, the French Third Sector is predominately financed by public money that is concentrated on those subsections which form the core of the welfare state: education, health and social services. However, public funding is currently being reduced and against this background, government and nonprofit-organizations are looking for new ways of cooperation. In other words, in France the partnership of the Third Sector with government is changing as well as its position and role in the French welfare mix. Introduction In the following the results of the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Sector Comparative Project for France will be presented, thus outlining: * the overall size of the Third Sector in France in 1995, * its composition, * its revenue sources, and * its recent evolution. Thereafter, the Third Sector's central role in labour market policies will be discussed. In France, many new jobs, new markets and new skills have initially been explored by volunteer work. Combined with a trend towards professionalisation this knowledge served as a blueprint for paid labour. Moreover, the changing role of the nonprofit organizations as partners in a new welfare mix will be analysed. The recent Assises de la Vie Associative - a major event which gathered in February 1999 more than 2,500 nonprofit leaders, many government representatives and eight ministers including the Prime Minister was a kind of celebration of the government nonprofit sector partnership. But beyond this temporary event the relationship is not so clearly defined and in some subfields it includes a newcomer: the for-profit sector. I. Dimension of the French Nonprofit Sector As stated elsewhere (Archambault 1997 a, 1997 b), the French nonprofit sector developed only quite recently, associations - the generic form for most nonprofit organizations - being illegal during the whole 19th Century until a nearly centenarian act legalized them. During the 1960s and the 1970s the French Nonprofit Sector slowly grew in a context of state-provided welfare. More recently the decentralization of 1982 broke with a millenary Jacobin tradition which was a major incentive for the Third Sector to contract with local authorities. Graph 1 shows this recent growth: today between 60,000 and 70,000 associations are created per year, more than three times the average of the 1960s. [GRAPH OMITTED] A. Overall Size of the French Third Sector In 1995 full-time-equivalent employment was 975,000 including religion and 960,000 excluding religion - that is 5 per cent of the total employment or the total agricultural employment or the total employment of all consumption-goods-manufacturing industries in 1995. In addition to this paid employment, millions of volunteers are working in the Third Sector. One French individual out of four declare to be a volunteer. The total operating expenditures of the Third Sector in 1995 was FF 290 billion (44.2 billion Euro), which is the equivalent of the turnover of the public utilities industry or the mechanical engineering industry. These figures do not include the estimated monetary value of volunteering which would raise the sum by some 70 per cent. Therefore, the economic activity of the French Third Sector - which is frequently a by-product of its social role - is significant and sizeable. In a comparative perspective France is a middle weight - graph 2 shows the nonprofit share of total employment by country. The French third sector ranks exactly at the average level among the 22 countries which were included in the statistical part of the project. Germany is in a similar position. Graph 2: Nonprofit share of total employment by country, 1995 Netherlands 12. …