France launches fertility plan as birth rate falls below deaths

The French government is carrying out a series of 16 measures to help slow declining birth rates, including sending a letter to all 29-year-olds. This is planned to happen before the end of the summer.

The plan fertilité (fertility plan) aims to enable everyone to make informed personal choices and to live their lives in the best possible health claims a press release published on February 5 by France’s Health Ministry.

This centres around informing young adults, “without coercion or social pressure,” about reproductive health, fertility and contraception, to avoid the ‘if only I had known’ scenario.

The action comes as birth rates in France have gradually dropped, and in 2025, Insee’s official figures for France’s population confirmed more deaths than births for the first time since World War Two. During the year, 645,000 babies were born and 651,000 people died.

What does the plan include?

Almost one in eight couples in France wants a child but is struggling to conceive, whether for physical health reasons or for personal situations, reports the Health Ministry. 

With this in mind, the fertility plan was created primarily to educate these couples but also to develop care facilities, improve treatment of illnesses that can impact reproduction, and launch a national system for managing gamete and embryo donations - “to improve the transparency, traceability, and efficiency of the system.”

The plan, led by Health Minister Stephanie Rist, outlines 16 measures that are split into four key axes: awareness and prevention, early detection and better diagnosis of infertility, care provision (improving, expanding, and better informing on ‘medically assisted’ reproduction), and making France a leader in fertility research and innovation.

Letters to be sent to men and woman aged 29 

Upon turning 29 years old, people in France can store their sex cells (sperm and eggs) without requiring a medical reason to do so. 

Furthermore, in 2023, a woman’s first pregnancy happened on average at the age of 29.1 years, revealed State statistics agency Insee in a report published last July. 

The government therefore plans to issue “targeted, balanced information on both sexual and reproductive health to all men and women aged 29,” in the form of a letter - of which the first batch should be sent within the next six months, reported Le Figaro. 

Other informative measures include creating a national portal on reproductive health via Santé.fr, strengthening sexual health education in schools, and improving the prevention of environmental and behavioral risks that may impact fertility. 

Diagnosing infertility, endometriosis and PCOS

The fertility plan also outlines measures to facilitate early detection of infertility and to refer patients more effectively.

This includes “continuing the national strategy to combat endometriosis, with improved diagnosis and treatment” as well as improving the diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), "a condition strongly associated with infertility, which is still underdiagnosed.”

30 self-preservation centres to open

A total of 40 self-preservation centres, which allow men and women to store sperm and eggs, currently exist in France, however the government plans to increase this number to 70 by 2028 in order to expand the service and reduce waiting lists.

The Health Ministry also aims to conduct a national survey on self-preservation “to better understand the motivations, expectations, and profiles of those concerned.”

Improvements will also be made to the information provided to patients undergoing procréation médicalement assistée (PMA), which includes IVF (in vitro fertilisation) and artificial insemination. 

Researching perinatal and maternal health

The plan also highlights France’s “worrying” infant and maternal mortality rate. 

“France has a higher maternal and infant mortality rate than its main European neighbors, maternal mortality has stagnated, and infant mortality, particularly neonatal mortality, has risen slightly since 2011,” reads the press release. 

The government is therefore launching a research project to build an operational action plan concerning areas such as prevention before and during pregnancy, the functioning of maternity wards, emergency management, and neonatology. 

The initial conclusions of this project will be submitted by June 2026.