`titrebThe palliative care in France: implementing healthcare policies`/titrebIn France, the development of palliative care is today in a paradoxical situation. Although the official position appears encouraging, it is accompanied by means that are dispersed within the framework of a multiform and uncertain strategy. By following a perspective of research in public healthcare combining studies and interventions carried out over the past ten years, this article’s aim is twofold: to reread the history and developmental policies of palliative care in France so as to discover its logic as well as to emphasize its main issues and limits. The policy of palliative care and its practical declension is complex to reflect upon, to implement and to accompany. It is protean, and, as such, it appears retrospectively as the will to improve care for the terminally ill by taking a “palliative approach”. The main issue, therefore, consists of “concretely implementing the policy”. If the “why” of such a policy appears to be legitimate, the “how”, that is, the available means as well as the strategic dimension and coherence between the aim and the conditions of its implementation, must be discussed. The main points are ; insufficient resources, a complex architecture, little knowledge about healthcare organisation, and needs for a global strategy to promote palliative care. In the current stage of palliative care development, certain perspectives could come to light.