Does France today have as many civil unions as marriages?
The number of PACS (PActe Civil de Solidarité), France’s civil union, has only exceeded the number of marriages once since it was instituted in 1999, and that was in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic—hardly the most auspicious year for wedding festivities. That year there were a total of 154,600 marriages in Metropolitan and Overseas France, as against nearly 174,000 PACS. While the overall numerical advantage of marriage persists—the respective figures in 2022 were 241,700 marriages and 209,800 civil unions—trends in the opposite direction could one day reverse the situation. In fact, marriage rates have been falling for decades in France, whereas there are now nearly ten times as many PACS than in the year 2000. It is also true that the PACS rate slowed in the 2010s and that nearly one fourth of “PACSed” partners get married later.
Moreover, PACSed couples still represent a minority of the total population: of the 15.4 million couples in France counted in recent population census operations, only 8% were PACSed, while 72% were married, and the remaining 20% were in a non-institutionalized cohabiting union. These figures are explained in part by the fact that many couples who institutionalized their union did so before the PACS existed.
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Update : March 2024