France's system for moving asylum seekers from the Paris region to other parts of the country has helped ease pressure on accommodation, but is not being used to its full potential and remains unevenly applied, according to the country's public spending watchdog.
The Cour des comptes – France's independent auditing body – said the redistribution plan had become an effective tool for tackling a long-standing imbalance between the large number of asylum seekers arriving in the Paris region and the limited accommodation available there.
In 2020, 46 percent of asylum applications in France were registered in the Paris region, while the area accounted for only 19 percent of national accommodation capacity for asylum seekers during the first stage of their applications.
Fewer than half of asylum seekers could therefore be housed, the court said in its report published on Thursday.
Regional targets
Under a system introduced after the 2018 immigration law, asylum seekers registering in the Paris region can be offered accommodation elsewhere in France without knowing their destination in advance.
Around 40 percent refuse the offer, despite losing access to accommodation and financial support reserved for asylum seekers.
The scheme resulted in almost 18,000 relocations in 2024, close to the target of 22,000, at a cost of €50 million. The court described this as limited compared with overall asylum accommodation spending of €962m.
The report also noted that 70 percent of asylum seekers were housed in 2024, although it said it could not establish a clear link between that result and the relocation scheme.
Some regions accepted far fewer people than planned. Pays de la Loire in the west of France received 504 asylum seekers from the Paris region against a target of 2,445, while Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the central east and Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the south west, also fell well below their targets.
Accommodation concerns
The court recommended improving management of the scheme and extending it to the Hauts-de-France region north of Paris, that includes the Channel port of Calais, and which is also facing pressure from large numbers of asylum seekers.
It also examined 10 regional reception centres created in 2023 to accommodate people moved from camps in the Paris region.
More than 8,000 people had passed through the centres by the end of October 2025, at a cost of €8m.
The court said the centres had helped reduce pressure on emergency accommodation in the Paris region and had provided health, social and administrative support.
However, only a little over a third of available places had been used. The court said some accommodation was unsuitable for families and women.
It also said there was no administrative monitoring after people left the centres, making it impossible to assess claims by aid groups that some later returned to the streets or went back to the Paris region.
(with newswires)
