towards the end of non-recourse thanks to the payment of social assistance at source?

The RSA, the activity bonus and the APL are affected by an experiment. A “positive development”, but not without risk, according to Daniel Verger, responsible for access to work and social benefits at Secours Catholique-Caritas France.

It was a campaign promise from Emmanuel Macron. And it will see the light of day in the fall in the form of a first experiment. Solidarity at source, equivalent to the withholding of income taxes, is a system aimed at automating the payment of social benefits to their beneficiaries. Objective: to respond to the problem of unreceived aid, which amounts to several billion euros each year.

From the fall, the CAFs of five departments (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hérault, Ardennes, Aube and Alpes-Maritimes) will begin a simplification experiment, where the forms will be pre-filled automatically for beneficiaries. A “first step“which Daniel Verger, responsible for access to work and social benefits at Secours Catholique-Caritas France, welcomes, but who nevertheless says he fears “bugs and perverse effects” with automation.

franceinfo: It’s a system that is really promising, but which is very difficult at first glance to put in place to bring together so much information on a territorial scale.

Daniel Verger: This is an expected first step in a reform which is of great interest: that is to say moving in the direction of simplification and greater automation of access to social benefits. So, it will concern the RSA and the activity bonus, but it is already important! And it is also better to go step by step, hence the interest of this experiment in five departments, to prevent bugs and perverse effects from appearing. This remains a large IT operation, so it’s not simple. And then, we know that computer operations can then present difficulties, that is to say that there can be errors, bugs which mean that people do not find themselves in a simplified situation at all, but in reality with suspensions or access problems that they did not foresee. But we are still expecting a generalization in the first months of 2025. And, despite these risks, it is still a positive development.

Concretely, what will this change for the beneficiaries?

When you are a recipient of RSA, you must, every quarter, declare all your resources. There are a lot of things to enter and the risk of error is quite high, because it is not easy to complete. A pre-filled form should therefore reduce this risk of errors, or at least make it easier to fill out the form, a bit like we see for tax declarations. This can help reduce what we call non-take-up, these beneficiaries who are eligible for RSA, but who do not receive it. However, this is a significant percentage: more than a third of people who should receive the RSA who do not in reality receive it. And that represents billions of euros. We must therefore provide for this in the additional budgets, if we really want to combat non-take-up. Facilitating the declaration can be an element which helps to combat this non-recourse.

Moreover, non-recourse concerns almost all allowances…

This concerns all allowances, all social benefits. For APL and family allowances, the percentages are lower since these are allowances which are perhaps better targeted and their procedures less complicated. For the activity bonus, it is a little less important, but for example.

“For the old age minimum, we are more around 50% of beneficiaries who do not receive it. It can be colossal.”

Daniel Verger

at franceinfo

Who is this approach particularly aimed at?

They are of course the most precarious, the most fragile, also those who have unstable resources and who have had difficulty completing these forms until now. And then, it must be said that the entire operation of dematerialization of online procedures which has been carried out for several years, in reality, works against access to social benefits for the most vulnerable groups. They find themselves alone in front of a screen, not knowing exactly who to ask for advice or help. The fact that many services are closed makes it difficult today to contact someone at CAF or CPAM. This also makes the procedures complicated and causes some beneficiaries to abandon the process.