In fact, already ten years ago, a double positioning could be discerned in the ministers' statements: the creation of the Agency was not only an "administrative construction"; France needed to aggressively enter the education market in order to derive direct economic benefits, the Agency needed to “sell our higher education offering” and at the same time, it had to “win the battle of the 21st century for gray matter” by favoring the arrival of “solvent” elites from major emerging countries. The aim was to directly address an individual and consumerist international student population that had to be won over, particularly through professional trade shows. At the same time, through political voluntarism an idea of “soft power” was developed which the Agency was expected to exercise. It was urgent to take action since the annual number of foreign students in France had been decreasing since 1994. In addition, a request was put forward to implement a "specific African co-development strategy” for professional training, a task not requiring the Agency’s involvement. In response to journalists’ questions, Claude Allègre stated that Edufrance should not cost the State anything beyond a significant initial subsidy, the clearly assigned objective being to "do better than the Australians" by allowing "an autonomous Agency" with a large capacity for self-financing to pursue "its own dynamic process"*.

Anneliese Dodds, a researcher at the London School of Economics, has clearly analyzed what happened next: in this first period, Edufrance was criticized for its commercialization of higher education, its self-promotion, but also its direct competition with its own members through its services to receive foreign students.

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* "Edufrance is not meant to lose money, it will earn money. It won’t cost the French State anything", "However, a budget of at least 10 million francs has been provided for communication, trade shows, promotion, fairs and marketing. The total investment over four years will be 100 million francs with an increased capacity for self-financing through the winning of contracts." (DPIC-EDUFR, p.4).

As shown in a report by the Cour des comptes, the French audit court, not only were the objectives in purely numerical terms not attained but the results were probably not the right ones since the Agency largely outsourced the tasks of receiving foreign students to other operators without managing to attract a great number of such students. The fact that the Agency’s promotional activities made no distinction between an ordinary business school and the finest French universities hardly helped matters. Despite this sharp criticism, the Edufrance name gradually gained recognition, particularly by organizing high quality trade shows, the first of which, held in Mexico, was inaugurated by no less than the French President, Jacques Chirac.
The creation of the Conseil National de la Mobilité (French National Mobility Council) in 2001, chaired by Professor Elie Cohen, was the first sign of a need to refocus the Agency’s activities in relation to those implemented by other mobility players; this applied not only to commercial services but also to pedagogical engineering activities. In fact, this additional advisory organization brought about the first shift in the Agency’s development, “reining in” its activities in order to better coordinate them with those of other operators and improving the attractiveness of French higher education by opening up to other potential partners. The arrival of this new body underscored the inadequacy of the original “consultative committee”, despite the fact that it had been planned from the outset, chaired by the General Manager of CCIP (the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris) and meant to bring Edufrance closer to the business world.