The study examines French cultural diplomacy, an element of the policy of maintaining influence, in Eastern Europe and the Balkans after the Second World War, with an emphasis on the 1940s and 1950s (as part of a larger study covering the entire Cold War period). The article reveals what strategies Paris used depending on the national specificities of the targeted country. Parallels and differences are pointed out with particular examples cited. It traces how the different countries have responded to the modus operandi of French cultural diplomacy, which has been undertaken with extraordinary dynamism in the region.