Mohamed Tounba, a major general and Minister of the Interior since the coup d’état carried out by the junta of the National Council for the Defense of the Fatherland (CNDP), which overthrew elected President Mohamed Bazoum on February 8, 2023
Light summer reading — the other day I picked up “D’or et de jungle” (roughly, “Of Gold and Jungle”) by Jean-Christophe Rufin, bought at the train station. The book tells the story of the preparation and execution of a coup d’état in Brunei, a wealthy Southeast Asian sultanate. Beneath the plot, the book also offers a reflection on the destabilization of societies and the resilience of states.
The coup imagined by Rufin doesn’t primarily rely on direct military action or the brutal seizure of institutions. That phase exists, but it’s only the final step in the process. As is often the case, most of the work consists of preparing the ground: making a society receptive to upheaval, weakening its political and societal defenses, polarizing relationships, blurring points of reference, undermining trust — and thereby creating the conditions in which a series of seemingly unrelated events makes a change of regime inevitable. No event occurs except because its environment allows it.
Applied to a coup d’état, this chain of events pursues a precise political goal. Before overthrowing a government, one must first shake the system in which it operates. But this erosion of the foundations of society, the economy, and institutions can also happen without any overarching plan — almost without our noticing.
It’s the level of resilience that defines the crisis
This is precisely what makes resilience so important. Resilience is not a permanent state but an evolving property of political, economic, and societal systems. A state can appear solid while gradually losing the capacities that allow it to withstand a combination or succession of shocks. Yet contemporary crises don’t arise from isolated shocks followed by a return to normal. Health, security, economic, and climate shocks intertwine in their effects. They form systems of crises in which each shock changes the conditions under which the next one occurs.
The Covid pandemic, for example, structurally transformed global supply chains, increased the debt burden of many countries, and profoundly eroded trust between citizens and governments. None of these developments had returned to a prior state before the impact of the war in Ukraine, and then the current energy crisis, further intensified them.
What distinguishes an incident from a crisis, then, is not just the intensity of the shock. It’s also the ability of states and societies to absorb it, contain tensions, and maintain a minimum of collective trust and regulation. Given comparable exposure to forest fires, for instance, countries with emergency services, aerial firefighting resources, and warning systems are better equipped to intervene early — as we saw this summer. But their resilience also depends on other factors: trust in public information, compliance with evacuation orders, the robustness of energy networks, the continuity of essential services, and the strength of insurance mechanisms, among others.
All societies experience tensions, political conflicts, inequalities, or institutions of varying robustness. These tensions are normal, but they become dangerous when they turn into mechanisms for the propagation of crisis.
This propagation can be intentional, when a society’s vulnerabilities are identified and amplified. Criminal networks have long exploited state failures to establish themselves and thrive. Disinformation campaigns are remarkably effective at creating or fueling anti-French sentiment in the Sahel, anti-European sentiment before Brexit, or “anti-anything” sentiment more broadly.
But crisis can also spread without malicious intent, through the gradual weakening of resilience systems. Underinvestment in justice, education, information, civic space, or a predictable environment erodes trust between citizens and institutions and reduces the collective capacity to respond to the small disruptions that characterize the normal life of a society.
A description attributed to a 1999 speech by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela captures this dynamic: when a system lacks the capacity to regulate a small disturbance, that disturbance goes unaddressed, and further unaddressed disturbances accumulate until the system loses its regulatory capacity altogether — at which point catastrophe follows. That this analysis comes from Chávez makes it, ironically and in hindsight, all the more strikingly relevant.
Apartments severely damaged after a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Turkey, Gölbaşı, Adıyaman
Rethinking cooperation to strengthen resilience
This reading of how crises spread has direct implications for international cooperation. If fragility stems in part from a system’s inability to absorb shocks, then development cooperation cannot simply be about financing projects. It must help create and restore reserves, room for maneuver, and buffering mechanisms that prevent an initial shock from turning into a systemic crisis for those least able to absorb it.
Development cooperation should therefore not be judged solely by the sectoral results it produces, but also by its ability to strengthen essential functions. Yet resilience capacities often remain invisible until they’re actually called upon. An unused financial reserve, strategic stockpiles, or even a local mediation mechanism can seem costly in normal times — which is why they tend to be underfunded. Their real value only becomes apparent at the moment they prevent a systemic breakdown.
Imagine a sharp rise in global wheat prices. In a country heavily dependent on imports, with little in the way of foreign exchange reserves and limited fiscal room to maneuver, this price increase inevitably passes straight through to consumers. Outside humanitarian aid may partially meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations, but the price increase will likely fuel social unrest. That unrest can then be presented as proof of the government’s illegitimacy. A disinformation campaign may further amplify the perception that the authorities are lying or concealing the truth. A violent response from security forces will confirm the narrative of a repressive regime. Foreign investors pull back, or international cooperation slows. Public revenues fall accordingly, leaving the state with fewer and fewer means to stabilize the situation or invest in the future.
What began as an economic problem stemming from an external shock quickly becomes a political crisis, and potentially a security crisis. The economic, political, societal, human, environmental, and security dimensions don’t operate independently of one another — they reinforce each other in a virtuous or vicious circle.
Resilience does not mean preventing every shock. No country can eliminate its exposure to crises, especially global ones. Resilience means preventing a shock from destroying the system’s capacity to function, by building buffers. Buffers slow the spread of failures. They give authorities time, offer populations alternatives, and preserve the possibility of political decision-making. Should we cut our energy consumption at the cost of economic growth, or should we keep economic activity going by subsidizing household and business access to energy? And if so, with what resources — more debt, or more taxes? These are the difficult choices currently facing every country heavily dependent on energy imports.
Rocket launchers at the Obuz-Lesnovsky military base in Belarus, an ally of Russia (2021)
This conception of resilience is universal. It avoids dividing the world into fragile countries that supposedly need help and strong countries that supposedly hold the solutions. Every society faces the same need to maintain its cohesion, protect its essential functions, and renew its capacity to adapt. This is why the concept of resilience should not be reduced to disaster preparedness. It is fundamentally political. A resilient society is one that can weather a crisis without losing its decision-making mechanisms, its principles of legitimacy, or its ability to shape its own future.
Cyprien Fabre.
Cyprien Fabre is the head of the « crises and fragilities » unit at the OECD. After several years of humanitarian missions with Solidarités, he joins ECHO, the humanitarian department of the European Commission in 2003, and holds several positions in crisis contexts. He joins the OECD in 2016 to analyze the engagement of DAC members in fragile or crisis-affected countries. He has also written a series of “policy into action” guides then ”Lives in crises” in order to help translate political and financial commitments of donors into effective programming in crises. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Aix-Marseille.
A long march, and one missed opportunity after another
I have been fighting on this issue for almost twenty years. The Landau report on New International Contributions, submitted in 2004 in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, is probably the moment I truly believed the cause was going to move forward. Having been heard by the working group, I had strongly pushed the idea of a solidarity lottery. The response, at the time, from one of the senior officials at Coordination Sud: “Gambling to fund humanitarian work? You can’t be serious.” The idea was buried, and France opted instead for the tax on airline tickets — effective in its time, but difficult to replicate today and entirely dependent on political decision-making.
A few months later, the French Development Agency (AFD) commissioned me to write a forward-looking study on innovative sources of private funding for French international solidarity NGOs. I devoted an entire chapter to lotteries, raffles, and draws. That study, submitted in June 2006, already cited the project “Parions pour un monde meilleur” (“Let’s bet on a better world”), led by Frédéric Koskas and Ondine Khayat together with a coalition of nine NGOs (Aides, Aide et Action, Care, La Chaîne de l’Espoir, AFXB, Terre des Hommes, Intervida, SOS Sahel, WWF). The idea: have the Française des Jeux (FDJ) organize additional draws in which 20% of the share normally allocated to winners would instead go to humanitarian causes, without costing the State anything. The concept received good media coverage at a press conference in the summer of 2006.
Ten years of rowing against the current. We were finally received at FDJ, with a reception cold enough to make clear we were seriously unwelcome. And as time went on, FDJ began occupying the field itself. The Loto du patrimoine (“Heritage Lottery”), launched in 2018 with Stéphane Bern and the Fondation du patrimoine, is the most visible example: it has raised more than €180 million cumulatively since 2018, including €29.1 million in the 2025 edition alone.¹ The scratch card game Mission Nature, launched in October 2023 in partnership with the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), raised more than €7 million in its very first edition.² Meanwhile, independent project sponsors keep being told that a general-purpose solidarity lottery run by non-profit organizations (OSBL) themselves is simply not possible.
Along with a few fellow travelers, we eventually founded the Association pour la libéralisation des loteries solidaires (APLS) — a small group of lobbyists, one contact in the Senate — and then the dissolution of the National Assembly dissolved us too, like some bad joke.
Twenty years on, the finding remains the same: France is missing out on a resource worth several hundred million euros a year for civil society, out of loyalty to a model that exists nowhere else in Europe in such a locked-down form.
What is happening elsewhere
While we go in circles, the model of regular solidarity lotteries has become established in several European countries. The most striking case is Novamedia, founded in 1983 by Boudewijn Poelmann in the Netherlands, which today operates the Postcode Lottery Group in five countries: the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway.
Winners of the Postcode Lottery in the United Kingdom
A few recent figures to give a sense of scale:
In 2024, the Postcode Lottery Group posted record revenue of €2.7 billion and paid out €969 million to its charity partners.
In 2025, partner charities received €1 billion.
Since 1989, the cumulative total paid out to causes of general interest has surpassed €15 billion.
In 2021, Novamedia was ranked the third-largest private philanthropic donor in the world, behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
Alongside Novamedia, other models exist in Europe: Aktion Mensch and the Fernsehlotterie in Germany (together paying out more than €220 million a year), the Health Lottery in the United Kingdom, and ONCE in Spain (the historic lottery for the blind, with more than €2 billion in annual revenue). The European Charity Lotteries Association (ACLEU) estimates that, if rolled out across the whole European Union, this model could mobilize €10 billion a year for civil society.
Ticket for the April 2026 ONCE Spanish lottery for the Las Cuervas Natural Park in Almería
France, the fifth-largest economy in the eurozone, remains one of the very few major European countries where this tool does not exist. According to the Panorama national des générosités 2024, published by France générosités and the Fondation de France, total charitable giving in France reached €9.2 billion in 2022 — €5.4 billion in individual donations and bequests, and €3.8 billion in corporate philanthropy — benefiting general-interest non-profits.³ This giving, despite real growth over the past fifteen years, has stagnated in real terms since 2022. A well-designed solidarity lottery could, on its own, eventually add several hundred million euros to that pool, for the sole benefit of the general-interest sector.
Why is it blocked in France?
The blockage comes down to a single word: monopoly. Since the general prohibition law of 21 May 1836, lotteries have in principle been banned in France. Three main exceptions coexist today: FDJ, which holds the monopoly on lottery games (draws and scratch cards) and on sports betting through its physical retail network; operators licensed by the ANJ (Unibet, Betclic, Winamax, PMU, etc.) for online sports and horse-race betting and online poker, opened to competition by the law of 12 May 2010; and casinos. On the margins, charity raffles are tolerated, but confined to a single annual event per association, with capped winnings and no regular draw. It is specifically the lottery monopoly that locks up this issue, not the gambling market as a whole.
The PACTE law of 22 May 2019 privatized FDJ while simultaneously granting it an exclusive 25-year concession over lottery games. In other words, the State privatized an operator while guaranteeing it a monopoly. That is the lock that needs to be broken — and it is not as locked as it appears.
There are three reasons for this. First, in October 2024 the European Commission issued a decision (EU 2025/892) that validates the PACTE framework, but under strict conditions and only after a formal in-depth investigation lasting several years. The question of the scope of the monopoly, and of state-aid law, therefore remains open in practice.
Second, EU law itself is clear: a national monopoly can coexist with other forms of gaming, particularly non-profit ones, provided they serve distinct general-interest objectives. That is exactly the case in every country that has authorized solidarity lotteries: the United Kingdom since 1976, the Netherlands since 2016, Germany since 2012. None of them has seen its national lottery collapse as a result.
Finally — and this is the most recent development — a bill (No. 565, 2025–2026) was tabled in the Senate on 23 April 2026 by Senator Bernard Delcros, aiming precisely to authorize the organization of solidarity lotteries in France. For the first time in twenty years, the issue is formally back before lawmakers. It needs to be seized.
The model we propose
A French-style solidarity lottery, inspired by the Novamedia model but adapted to our legal and political context, should rest on five principles.
Governance by the non-profits themselves, carried by a dedicated foundation. Above all, this must not be entrusted to FDJ United. The experience of the past twenty years is clear: a commercial operator under monopoly captures the momentum for the benefit of its own “good cause” operations. The opposite approach is needed: a publicly recognized foundation, created specifically for this purpose or built on an existing structure such as the Fondation de France, holding the license and redistributing the funds in full to a collective of non-profits — associations and foundations selected on transparent criteria. The Novamedia model is exemplary here: the entire group is owned by a foundation with no shareholders to enrich, which cannot legally sell its shares. All profit is reinvested in the mission.
Group photo from the presentation of the coupon dedicated to the Las Cuevas de Sorbas Natural Park in Almería, Spain
A state license and a strict regulatory framework. There is no question of opening up the gambling sector to just anyone under the banner of humanitarian aid. The National Gaming Authority (ANJ), created in 2019, is the right body to issue the license, set transparency requirements, control advertising, and guard against problem gambling. The British Lotteries Council model, or the Dutch model (which has authorized any non-profit initiative paying out at least 40% of revenue to the charitable sector since 2016), can serve as references.
An independent ethics committee. Beneficiary organizations would be selected on criteria of financial transparency, governance, quality of action, and representativeness of causes (humanitarian, environmental, research, social). Annual publication of fund allocations. Impact evaluation of funded projects.
A minimum payout threshold to the non-profit sector of at least 30% of revenue — the level set by the UK’s People’s Postcode Lottery, and far above what FDJ currently allocates to “good causes” (on the order of 0.5% to 1% of revenue depending on the game). Evidence from elsewhere in Europe shows this rate is economically sustainable.
A mechanism of regular draws, rather than the single annual event of a charity raffle, which allows neither player loyalty nor sustainable revenue. This is precisely the difference between a raffle and a solidarity lottery: regularity, which turns a one-off act of disguised giving into a habit of civic consumption.
Answering the objections, one by one
“This will compete with FDJ United and weaken revenue for the State.”
This is the objection raised most consistently. It does not survive scrutiny. Data from the European countries that have authorized solidarity lotteries all show that substitution with the national lottery is marginal. The UK Gambling Commission stated in 2018 that solidarity-lottery sales are not seen as a significant driver of national lottery sales. In the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany — precisely the markets with the strongest national lotteries — solidarity lotteries have grown without significant cannibalization.
The explanation is simple: the audience for a solidarity lottery is not the same as the audience for EuroMillions. Solidarity-lottery players are mostly occasional donors, drawn as much by the cause as by the prize, with small regular stakes (often €2 to €10 a month via subscription). Their sociological profile is closer to that of a non-profit donor than a compulsive gambler. It is a complement, not a substitute.
“This will cost the State in lost tax revenue.”
The opposite is true. Unlike a donation, which is 66% tax-deductible for individuals, a solidarity lottery costs the State nothing in tax breaks. Better still: the State collects VAT on ticket sales, just as on any other service. On a hypothetical turnover of one billion euros — roughly the scale Novamedia has reached at maturity in each of its markets — the State would collect around €167 million a year in new revenue at the standard VAT rate. On top of that come social contributions and corporate tax paid by technical service providers along the chain. The net effect on public finances is positive, with no tax expenditure in return.
“Funding humanitarian work through gambling is not ethical.”
This objection deserves attention, because it is what killed the project in 2004. It is worth recalling a piece of history that should be better known. The French National Lottery, created in 1933 — the direct ancestor of today’s FDJ — was established to formalize the lottery run by the association of “Gueules cassées” (“broken faces”), founded by disfigured veterans of the First World War to fund their own care and that of their comrades. The State of the Third Republic judged, in the context of the 1929 crisis, that it was entirely legitimate for chance to fund aid to the nation’s wounded. The Union des Blessés de la Face et de la Tête (the “Gueules cassées”) still holds 10.1% of FDJ United’s capital today, and most of its income still comes from the dividends of the lottery it helped create ninety years ago.
Poster for the first Lithuanian charity lottery. 1918. Digital print. Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences: Vytautas Bičiūnas (1893–1943): “The First Lithuanian Charity Lottery” (1918)
In other words: France has already been funding causes through gambling for nearly a century. It has even institutionalized the practice in the capital structure of its historic operator. To refuse today, on grounds of “ethics,” to let a similar mechanism support other causes — international solidarity, culture, the environment, the fight against poverty, medical research — amounts to a kind of historical denial. If gambling could fund the maxillofacial surgery of the disfigured of Verdun, it can fund food aid in the Sahel and the protection of primary forests.
The ethical argument can, in fact, easily be turned around. France’s gambling market generates roughly €13 billion a year in gross gaming revenue. That money already exists and is already being spent. The only question is whether a fraction of that flow can be redirected toward the general interest, beyond the State’s tax revenue alone. It is arguably more ethically questionable to let 100% of that money enrich a single privatized company and its reference shareholder than to redirect a portion of it to civil society.
“The model won’t work in France — the market is already saturated.”
This is exactly the argument that was made in Germany before 2012 and in the Netherlands before 2016, against authorizing solidarity lotteries. In both cases, reality proved the predictions wrong. Aktion Mensch raised €175 million in 2019, within its first decade of operation. The Dutch Postcode Loterij became, over thirty years, the country’s second-largest lottery.
More concretely, two recent French operations have shown the public’s appetite for this kind of offering. A Picasso-themed sale in aid of Care France raised around €5 million from an initial value of €1 million. A Système U operation for Action Contre la Faim mobilized €1 million from unused loyalty points alone. These operations took place at the margins of the legal framework, but they show one thing clearly: the demand exists.
Timing and urgency
Three windows make this a particularly opportune moment.
The first is legislative: the Delcros bill of 23 April 2026 is moving forward. Whatever its ultimate fate, it puts the issue back on the parliamentary table for the first time in twenty years. Non-profits have a concrete opportunity to make their voice heard — through committee hearings, advocacy with senators and MPs, and mobilizing public opinion. Failing to seize this window would be a mistake.
The second issue is budgetary: France’s humanitarian budget currently stands at 285 million euros through the three usual channels (CDCS, NUOI, AAP). It was 800 million euros in 2023, and a commitment had been made to increase it to one billion by 2025. This is a double blow when one considers that the percentage of humanitarian aid in France is among the lowest among European Union and OECD countries. Budget constraints look set to persist. NGOs can no longer simply wait for public funding decisions made in an increasingly harsh climate. Diversifying funding sources has become essential, and the solidarity lottery is one of the very few high-potential levers that depends neither on a budgetary trade-off nor on a willingness to pay taxes that is itself declining.
The third is more structural, tied to the changing nature of giving. Every study points the same way: the donor base is aging, direct marketing is losing effectiveness, and donor-file attrition is accelerating. Traditional giving — a one-off check in response to a mailed appeal — has reached its limits. The models on the rise are digital giving, automatic bank transfers, legacy giving (bequests, donations, life insurance), major philanthropy, and “conso-don-action” — giving embedded in an act of consumption or leisure, small-scale recurring engagement. The solidarity lottery does not replace any of these levers; it fits naturally into this family of regular giving, woven into everyday life, low in amount but with a strong cumulative effect.
In conclusion
There is another avenue, one I have championed for just as long and which is probably even more powerful: liberalizing bequest law. As long as France does not genuinely allow a testator — with or without heirs — to dispose of their estate more freely, we will continue to miss out on an enormous resource. British charities and American non-profits draw 30% to 50% of their resources from bequests. French non-profits struggle to exceed 5%. That is the other great structural battle to be fought.
But let’s not conflate the two fights. The solidarity lottery is ready, simpler to carry forward, and it now has an open parliamentary window. The issue has been ripe for twenty years. It is time to stop going in circles.
To public authorities, I ask three things: authorize, regulate, do not confiscate. Authorize, by passing the bill or a text inspired by it. Regulate, by entrusting the ANJ with issuing licenses and oversight. Do not confiscate, by refusing to let the mechanism be absorbed by FDJ United — otherwise, experience has taught us, the spirit of the reform will be diluted.
To associations, foundations, and all general-interest non-profits, I say: we need to mobilize now, together. A coalition of credible organizations, ready to build a joint foundation and present a well-structured project to lawmakers, could shift the balance of power. This is exactly the role that Coordination Sud, Le Mouvement Associatif, Don en Confiance, France Générosités, and the Centre Français des Fonds et Fondations can play in the coming weeks.
And to the readers of this journal: the next time you hear the moral objection — “funding development through gambling, you can’t be serious” — remember the Gueules cassées. That is how France has already been funding part of its social solidarity since 1933. It is time to open the second chapter.
Antoine Vaccaro.
Sources and notes
¹ FDJ United, “Patrimoine” page (fdjunited.com/fr/patrimoine) and Mission Bern FAQ (missionbern.fr/faq), accessed May 2026: “Since 2018, more than €180 million has been raised to support endangered heritage.” 2025 edition: €29.1 million announced by the Fondation du patrimoine in September 2025.
² FDJ press release, 14 March 2024: “Mission Nature: more than €7 million already raised for biodiversity conservation,” in partnership with the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), not the WWF as sometimes reported. FDJ separately supports WWF France’s Nature Impact fund through its own corporate philanthropy, but without a dedicated lottery game.
³ France générosités and Fondation de France, Panorama national des générosités 2024 (2022 data), published December 2024: €9.225 billion in total charitable giving in France, including €5.4 billion from individual giving and €3.8 billion in corporate philanthropy
Antoine Vaccaro :
He holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Sciences—Management of the Non-Profit Sector—from Paris-Dauphine University. After a career with major nongovernmental organizations and communications firms, such as the Fondation de France, Médecins du Monde, and TBWA, he now serves as president of Force For Good and Cerphi (Center for the Study and Research on Philanthropy).
He also serves in various administrative roles within associations and has co-founded several professional organizations promoting private funding for causes of public interest, including the Association Française des Fundraisers, Euconsult, and the ESSEC Chair in Philanthropy. He has also contributed to the drafting of the code of ethics for organizations that rely on public generosity.
Finally, he is the author of several books and articles on philanthropy and fundraising.
Cyprien Fabre is the head of the « crises and fragilities » unit at the OECD. After several years of humanitarian missions with Solidarités, he joins ECHO, the humanitarian department of the European Commission in 2003, and holds several positions in crisis contexts. He joins the OECD in 2016 to analyze the engagement of DAC members in fragile or crisis-affected countries. He has also written a series of “policy into action” guides then ”Lives in crises” in order to help translate political and financial commitments of donors into effective programming in crises. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Aix-Marseille.
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