“We don’t have a positive sign to eradicate poverty within a generation.“, alerted Tuesday April 26 on franceinfo Marie-Aleth Grard, president of the association ATD Fourth World, while the association launches on its site an appeal to Emmanuel Macron, just re-elected President of the Republic, to “an essential social, ecological and democratic turning point to end poverty and face the challenges before us”. poverty is “a forgotten emergency” of the previous five-year term and of the presidential campaign, believes Marie-Aleth Grard. The association urges the Head of State to “really fight against extreme poverty in our country”.
franceinfo: Was poverty forgotten during the campaign?
Marie-Aleth Grard : It’s a forgotten emergency. President Macron, in September 2018, said he would eradicate extreme poverty within a generation. However, currently, 9.3 million people live below the poverty line in our country. More than 4 million people are poorly housed. One and a half million young people are unemployed, without training. So it can’t last. It is absolutely necessary to take this social, ecological and democratic shift. Ecological and democratic, because ecology concerns everyone, in particular the most privileged populations. And democratic because we are worried after the results of these elections. We are worried about the democratic state of our country. So far, we have not seen positive signs of eradicating poverty within a generation. That is to say to really fight against poverty and extreme poverty in our country.
By only talking about purchasing power during the presidential election, hasn’t part of the problem been forgotten?
Of course, people have lost purchasing power and are losing purchasing power and they are worried. And they are right to be worried, we have to fight on that, of course. But for the people we’re talking about, the people who live in deep poverty, it’s worse than purchasing power. Because when you have 500 euros to live on a month, it’s no longer a question of purchasing power, it’s a question of survival. And it is not possible to have more than three million people in our country who are in a state of survival.
Emmanuel Macron mentioned the idea of conditioning the RSA on hours of training or activity. What do you think ?
It is not possible to condition the RSA to activity. The RSA is for people who have nothing to live on and who need this active solidarity income to be able to feed themselves, to feed their families, to be able to find housing and look for a job. So you can’t do activities, volunteer hours, and get a job at the same time. On the contrary, you really need to have the people who accompany them to look for a job. We need people to support these people who are at the RSA.