French babies have no place to go! At least, that is the complaint of mothers looking for a nursery/kindergarten space for their tots. There is a drastic shortage of nurseries, or crèches, in France: the total supply of nursery places covers just one child out of 9.
The shortfall in nursery/kindergarten supply was acknowledged by the government already in 2002. At the time, it launched “Plan Crèche” with an objective of creating 57,000 new places by 2008. So far, 26,000 have been created. The current government recently promised a further 15,000 places.
Filling the void, private crèches are flourishing, either as separate businesses or, even more popular, as nursery spaces within large corporations.
The government has pitched in by increasing the subsidies to private crèches to cover up to 80% of new investments and 70% of start-up costs, with a ceiling of €10,000.
Two types of company-crèches exist: mono-company or inter-company. The former is reserved solely for the employees of a single company. An example is the French oil giant Total that will open a crèche at its headquarters shortly. Inter-company crèches are open to employees of several companies that are grouped together in a geographic space like a business zone. Both types of company crèches are typically open during a full business day (from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) and pricing is comparable to local municipal crèches.
The sector complains of a lack of qualified staff to meet the demand. Nonetheless, the government estimates that some 4,000 new spaces will be created through private company crèches within the next 3 years.
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