France Cuts Housing Aid for Non-EU Students, Sparking University Access Concerns

Freezing of personalized housing assistance (APL), abolition of APL for non-EU foreign students who are not scholarship recipients. This is what the 2026 budget bill presented on Tuesday by the government provides for. The latter does not intend to revalue family allowances and also the APL in order to keep pace with inflation in 2026, as provided for by the "blank year" announced by former Prime Minister François Bayrou this summer.

For Suzanne Nijdam, the new president of the student association Fage, "removing the APL for non-EU non-scholarship students is really to kick out almost all non-EU students from our university system". This measure "can create thousands and thousands of dramatic situations", warns Manuel Domergue, director of studies at the Foundation for Housing the Underprivileged. Substantiating his point, he recalls that scholarship systems are not the same abroad and that only "2% to 3% of the 315,000 non-EU foreign students" are scholarship recipients.

If in "2026, maintaining the APL at their 2025 level will allow the State to make savings of 108 million euros, of which 54 million euros due to the lack of revaluation", "no evaluation is given of the savings linked to the abolition of the APL for foreign students who are not nationals of an EU, European Economic Area (Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland) or Swiss Confederation state, and who are not scholarship recipients", according to the draft finance law.