The French government has decided to say less. Not out of modesty, but to save money.
On 23 September 2025, the Prime Minister announced the immediate suspension of new spending on government communications until the end of the year. All ministries, agencies and public operators will be affected. This move is set to continue in 2026, with a 20% reduction in communication budgets. Only public health and recruitment campaigns will be exempt.
This announcement is part of a trend that has already begun: since 2017, public communication budgets have been halved, with a further reduction after COVID. For the moment, however, this trend has gone unnoticed. Less spending does not mean less talking. Government communications have moved: more digital, more direct, less costly. It has also become more inward-looking and internalised.
In a society where mistrust is at an all-time high – only 26% of French people say they have confidence in politics, and 23% in the government (CEVIPOF, Baromètre de la confiance politique 2025) – this sobriety has become a posture. Announcing that we are communicating less is reassuring. It gives the impression of controlled, almost moral speech.
In 2025, silence has become a message.
The cost of talking
The world has never spoken so much. Every second, around 5,900 tweets are sent out, with voices competing for already saturated collective brain time. Gérald Bronner calls this a cognitive apocalypse: a moment when the hierarchy of ideas collapses under the weight of the flow. Emotions circulate faster than facts, images are stronger than words.
In this global hubbub, the real problem is no longer what to say, but how to be heard.
The State, for its part, speaks slowly. Its words are subject to (multiple) validations, prudence and hierarchy. And in a media space dominated by speed, this slowness seems like a delay. If the public expected this kind of speech and recognised it as reliable, there would be no need for change. But it is coming up against a climate of chronic suspicion: distrust of political discourse was established long before social networks, and it is taking root with them. We live in a time when the impression that every public message has a hidden agenda is widespread. The State speaks on credit.
If it wants to survive in the public debate, it must learn to speak differently: faster, more agile, more authentically.
The public deficit has its political virtues, and (almost) everyone agrees on it. No one will dispute the need to ‘make efforts’, and even less so the need for ‘publicity’. Suspending this spending almost becomes a moral sign, a visible sacrifice, and therefore popular.
And yet, we have to keep talking, especially in this demanding context where every piece of news has to be commented on. So institutional communication is changing.
In the age of digitalization, administrations are making sure that their staff are trained to produce their own content, to tweet, film, edit and publish live. The Prime Minister’s own announcement was made directly on X. There are fewer photographers and JRIs in the directorates, and their work with ministers is systematically billed to the cabinets. Faced with this flow, communications teams are often under-resourced, expertise is eroded and formats are standardised. The day-to-day takes precedence and formats are no longer strategic, they are reactive.
But beware: silence can be more costly than words, and key issues must continue to be dealt with, otherwise they will be dealt with by others. The government knows this. It is surely for this reason that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has chosen to earmark part of its resources for the fight against informational interference.
By changing its methods, the public communication apparatus has become more fragile. While the industrial ecosystem (agencies, consultancies, graphic designers, etc.) has been particularly hard hit by the cost-cutting measures, it is all the allies in the public debate who are under threat of being destructured by this crisis of austerity.
Epidemic risk of dumbing down
The State’s efforts are creating a chain reaction. The French overseas territories are particularly sensitive to these budgetary variations.
The overseas territories are cited as a priority for public action, and rightly so given the many difficulties they are experiencing. They are also places where the crisis of confidence is at its worst, and where foreign powers have turned information into a weapon (as in the case of the BIG initiative, which targets journalists and engages in large-scale disinformation operations to incite movements of disobedience).
The economic model for the media in these territories is hanging by a thread: small advertising markets, significant logistical overheads, dependence on government campaigns. Print media outlets have often disappeared, swept away by the double wave of digital technology and budget cuts, either because subsidies have dwindled or because the essential additional income from media-buying campaigns by prefectures has fallen sharply. Béatrice Cléon, managing director of the France-Antilles group, talks of the risk of an ‘information desert’, with pluralism rendered impossible in some areas where information is vital.
Faced with these announcements, we must not forget that the public voice is an essential service. Not in the sense of a privilege, but as a vital function of the democratic body: informing, explaining, making things clear. This does not mean spending more, it means spending better.
We shouldn’t be looking for abstinence, but for coherence. Jacques Pilhan explained that scarcity is only worthwhile if the word, when it comes, is far-reaching and accurate. Every communicator knows that these cuts do not herald less communication, but the risk of communication running out of steam. The announced spending review should be an opportunity to eliminate duplication, improve clarity, and focus resources on what really matters: education, public policy, proximity, and monitoring weak signals before they become alarms. At the risk of losing our grip on certain subjects or territories.
What’s more, the State is not the sole architect of public discourse. Around it gravitate players that it sometimes perceives as competitors: journalists, agencies, platforms, creators, citizens. They are the adjuvants of public debate, the cautious relays of a collective narrative. To withdraw into one’s own voice is to run the risk of transforming public information into an institutional monologue and losing effectiveness.
The challenge is not to cut off communication, but to rebuild it. To move from a logic of control to a logic of listening. To tighten up without drying up. And to ensure that, in this new economy of the spoken word, territories, independent media and plural voices continue to find their place.
By Amélie Marques
