France considers billing hikers for mountain rescues

France’s state auditor says hikers who trigger rescues through “risky behaviour” should be billed for the cost of their own mountain recovery, according to The Independent. The Cour des Comptes puts the price of a helicopter intervention at about €10,780 in 2024 and estimates total mountain-rescue spending at nearly €107 million that year, up 55% since 2012.

The proposal is a fight over who carries the cost of leisure risk. When rescue is treated as a general public service, the price signal disappears at the point of decision: the marginal cost of taking an extra chance—pushing on late, ignoring weather, skipping equipment—does not land on the person taking it. The auditor’s report explicitly frames the system as one that needs “better measuring” of effectiveness and cost, and it points to neighbours such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland where foreign nationals are often billed after rescues.

But the hard part is not the invoice; it is the definition. Once the state starts charging only some rescues, it must decide which mistakes count as negligence and which are normal bad luck. That turns a cliffside extraction into an administrative dispute: What counts as “observing safety rules”? Who documents it, and how is it appealed? The comparison offered by a mountain-guides union leader—why not bill road accidents, drownings, or illnesses linked to smoking—highlights the political problem: selective charging looks less like risk pricing and more like a moral judgement.

The auditor notes that 17% of those rescued in 2024 were foreign nationals. That statistic makes the policy legible to taxpayers, but it also makes the billing system look like border control by other means.

For now, France still largely funds mountain rescues from general taxation, aside from some ski-resort interventions. The Cour des Comptes is asking for a framework that would make a helicopter ride a line item rather than a public good.