France puts €80m into getting its workers and small firms to use AI

France's labour minister, Jean-Pierre Farandou, presented a 12-measure plan on Tuesday 22 September to help workers, jobseekers, apprentices and smaller companies adopt artificial intelligence. Called "Impulsion IA 2027", it carries €80 million in new funding, according to AFP, which reports that half of its measures concern the "acculturation" of workers: making people in the workforce familiar with AI.

The ministry's case for the plan is that French companies are behind on AI, and that smaller firms are further behind than large ones. France's national statistics office, Insee, has published the figures that sit underneath that argument, and they show where the gap is.

What was announced

The plan is an employment-focused follow-on to "Osez l'IA", a government AI plan launched in summer 2025, AFP reports. Farandou presented it alongside the economy minister, Roland Lescure. "Without determined action on our part, AI will shape a world that will not necessarily be the one we want," Farandou said, in our translation of AFP's quote. He said AI can "improve working conditions" by removing some tasks, but can also "lead to the intensification of work" and "reinforce inequalities between jobs and qualifications".

According to AFP's two reports on the launch (one, two), the measures include:

• Explore IA, a free platform with no prerequisites that will be launched by Pix, the state start-up that already runs AI courses for secondary-school pupils. It will let users test their knowledge and follow what AFP calls "playful" learning paths.
• A second Pix platform for apprentices in France's apprentice training centres (CFAs), and extra money for those centres to train more people in skills such as AI development and cybersecurity. A national fund for CFAs is due to be created in the 2027 finance bill, with higher public funding for apprenticeships judged strategic.
• For jobseekers, a test through the public employment service, France Travail, to measure their AI "maturity", followed by a personalised training path.
• AI as a national priority in the reform of the Compte personnel de formation, the individual training account for workers, with more co-funding to cut what people pay themselves for AI courses. The ministry also plans a certification in using AI at work.
• "Task forces" to raise awareness among small and medium-sized firms of how AI can be used, including in recruitment, and support for sector-level industry branches to organise social dialogue — discussion between employers and unions — on the subject.
• An observatory of AI's impact, and trials of what the ministry calls "technological social dialogue" in around twenty companies and industry branches, with the national agency for working conditions, Anact.

Lescure separately mentioned a tax credit that would "accelerate depreciation for robots", particularly for small businesses, AFP reports.

The money comes at a tight moment. The labour ministry has to find €2.5 billion of savings in the 2027 budget, AFP reports, and people close to Farandou said the measures chosen were those offering the best return on investment and able to quickly set up a framework that other organisations could build on. The French AI newsletter Brief IA, previewing the launch, wrote that the government was presenting a plan "aux moyens limités" — with limited means.

What Insee's figures show

AFP's report cites Insee: 18% of French companies used at least one AI technology in 2025, which it describes as half the rate of the most advanced European countries.

The Insee publication behind that figure, Insee Première no. 2120 from 21 July 2026, adds context worth having. The 18% covers companies with 10 or more employees in mainly market sectors, excluding agriculture, finance and insurance. It is up 8 points on 2024 and has tripled since 2023. Insee gives the figure for the European Union as a whole as 20%, and describes the French rate as approaching it. It puts Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the Benelux countries at between 33% and 42%, and Germany at 26%. So France is close to the EU average and well behind the leaders; both descriptions are accurate.

The wider gap in Insee's data is by company size, and the ministry says smaller firms are part of what it is targeting. In 2025, Insee reports, 15% of companies with fewer than 50 employees used AI, against 31% of those with 50 to 249 and 58% of those with 250 or more. Companies with fewer than 50 employees make up 85% of the companies in the survey's scope. Use has tripled among firms with fewer than 250 employees since 2023, but because they started lower, Insee says the gap between the smallest and largest firms has widened, from 16 points in 2023 to 43 points in 2025.

Insee also asked companies that do not use AI why not. 71% said they did not see its usefulness, "in particular among the smaller ones", and 54% cited a lack of expertise, an obstacle mentioned mostly by the largest firms.

On our reading, that is the most relevant number for the part of the plan aimed at companies. A firm that does not see what AI is for is unlikely to be moved by training capacity alone. Half the plan's measures are about familiarising workers; the measure aimed directly at firms that have not started is mainly the awareness-raising "task forces". The plan's announced measures, as AFP reports them, do not say how their effect on that 71% will be measured.

The objections

The CGT union was critical. Agathe le Berder, a member of its confederal bureau, said, according to AFP, that "the whole part on social dialogue brings no new rights to employees in companies". She called it "scandalous" that the plan announced new support for companies without conditions attached, and objected to the individual training account, which workers hold, being used to pay for AI training. By not addressing companies' own skills-development plans, she argued, the announcements let employers off the hook.

The plan also arrives as the social partners are already moving. AFP reports that last week, at the end of the Conférence Travail, Emploi, Retraites, a national conference on work, employment and pensions, several unions and employers' organisations said they were ready to open a cross-industry negotiation on AI, judging that it was no longer the moment to be for or against it.

A note on sources: the labour ministry's own page for the plan, at travail-emploi.gouv.fr/impulsion-ia-2027, returned a security check to our fetchers, so the plan's details above are taken from AFP's reporting of the launch rather than from the ministry's text. The Insee figures are taken directly from Insee's publication.