10 billion euros. This is the amount sent from France abroad each year by immigrants, according to the latest note from the Observatory of Immigration and Demography (OID), which Le Figaro consulted exclusively. Between 2009 and 2023, these “migrant remittances” reached a cumulative 155.5 billion euros, according to data available on Eurostat. A phenomenon on the rise, the negative balance between incoming and outgoing sums having increased, annually, from some 7 billion to more than 15 between these two dates according to our colleagues.
France ranks at the top of European countries in this area. Its balance was in fact 15.8 billion in 2023, or almost half of the European deficit (44%) which amounted to 35.9 billion euros that year. “The migration crisis that began in 2015 has certainly contributed” to this increase, explains the note. Where is this money going? In 2023, according to Eurostat, more than half (51%) of the French deficit linked to money transfers benefited the African continent, including 41% to North African countries. This was followed by other European countries (25%) and Asia (18%).
Transfers to the detriment of France
As Eurostat only publishes part of the detail by country, the available data only concerns four African countries, including two from North Africa – Morocco (22%) and Egypt (2%). No details, on the other hand, on Algeria, for which the World Bank estimates transfers at 1.7 billion euros in 2023. But the French contribution to this jackpot is beyond doubt if we take into account the number of immigrants from this country on our soil – France alone accounts for 84% of valid residence permits for Algerians in the EU – and the total weight of North Africa in the sums sent from Hexagon.
If these amounts already seem colossal, we must keep in mind that these data do not take into account informal transfers, which are impossible to measure precisely: sending cash during trips, for example, or even parallel systems such as “ Hawala »a transfer network based on trust between intermediaries. According to an Ipsos survey, nearly a fifth of senders use these unofficial circuits, a proportion which reaches 21% for transfers to the Maghreb.
These transfers constitute essential support for the families who receive them, but can also slow down work and investment, warns the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In its State of World Migration 2024 report, the IOM highlights that these flows can destabilize recipient economies in the event of variations in amounts or exchange rates. For the countries of origin of the funds, France, in this case, the observation is just as worrying: these sums leave the national economic circuit without compensation. The OID sees a negative impact on consumption, GDP and tax revenues, contributing to the overall budgetary weight of immigration, estimated, on the basis of the last executed budget for the year 2023, at a gross cost of 75.1 billion euros for public finances.
