France is looking across the Channel for ideas. After reigniting the long-discussed idea of a "French BBC," which involves the controversial creation of a holding company merging France Télévisions and Radio France, Culture Minister Rachida Dati relaunched at the end of January another longstanding project inspired by our neighbors, a "French National Trust."

The British organization founded in 1895 is the largest landowner in the country. It manages 500 monuments, hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, and miles of coastline, thanks to an arsenal of financial tools ranging from bequests to membership fees. The figures are staggering: 50,000 volunteers, 12,000 employees and a trust fund of £1.6 billion (€1.88 billion). Can this machine, based on private donations (in exchange for inheritance tax exemptions) and volunteerism, be transplanted into a nation of individualists?

The mission assigned in January by Dati to the president of the French National Monument's Center (CMN), Marie Lavandier, is expected to provide some answers by the end of May on the conditions for adapting this success story to the French context and its 46,000 protected monuments, half of which are privately owned.

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