these billions of euros that the French do not claim

Every citizen has found himself confronted, one day, with the jamming of the administrative machine. To the documents to be provided twice, to an obscure refusal letter or to the claim of an overpayment. Whether the organization is Pôle emploi, the Departmental House for the Disabled (MDPH) or the Family Allowance Fund (CAF), the setbacks of each other are similar.

Caroline Boudet, for example, mother of Louise, 7 years old, suffering from trisomy 21, devotes part of her time to filling out several 20-page files to access hours of assistance at school or to obtain financial aid. complementary for psychomotricity sessions. “When it comes to asking for help for your child for the next school year, you have to do it a year in advance, given the instruction times”, she explains. But sometimes, despite determination and anticipation, it’s a dead end. Thus, the family suffered an unexplained refusal. “We went to the administrative court twice to have our right to benefit from an additional allowance recognized.says Caroline Boudet. I understand that there are so many people who give up in the face of the heaviness of it all.

For her part, Sabrina, in retraining to become a computer engineer, is impatiently awaiting the moment when she can do without Pôle Emploi. In June 2022, the Covid-19 forced her to stop for a week, which disrupted the payment of her allowances. Pôle emploi then paid him part of his allowances, which were to be supplemented by health insurance. But a month later, a letter warns her that she has received 115 euros in overpayment that she must repay. “I took the steps to request a cancellation of the debt, but no one answered meshe laments. As the repayment deadline was coming, I contacted my Pôle Emploi advisor via email to find out what to do, because I am unable to repay this amount. But she always closed the conversation without giving me an answer.” So many tedious and discouraging procedures.

For some vulnerable populations, the task has become insurmountable since the administration has gone all-digital. “The public authorities have implemented actions to simplify the procedures and make them accessible to as many people as possible.explains Clara Deville, sociologist at Inrae. The first stream of simplification, in 2009, consisted in bringing together the RMI and the single parent allowance to create the active solidarity income (RSA), and reduce the number of files to be completed. Then the second move was to go digital.” On paper, this development is a step forward. It allows many users to carry out procedures at home and at a time that suits them. “But this movement was accompanied by two phenomenaspecifies the sociologist. On the one hand, it has become impossible to come and queue at the counter to solve a problem. Now you have to make an appointment. And on the other hand, we are witnessing a movement of closure of agencies in rural areas, which are now all located in urban centers. In other words, physical access to agents has become more complicated, although it is still necessary for some recipients. Those who today have to perform some of the tasks that were the responsibility of agents yesterday (simulating their rights, preparing documents, identifying the correct figures to mention on a pay slip, etc.), risk making errors that delay account of their case. They therefore turn to associations to help them when they do not give in and give up the idea of ​​collecting part of their rights. According to a recent report by the Defender of Rights, digitization has complicated the procedures for 13 million users.

The public authorities have tried to rectify the situation. France Service agencies were created in areas where no public service was accessible. To date, there are 2,379. The promise made thanks to this network is to have an agency in “less than 30 minutes from home”. Only, it is up to the communities to create them and not all of them have the means. Moreover, the agents present in these structures do not have the skills required to help users understand their rights. Their task is limited to supporting them on a technical level. For Daniel Agacinski, general delegate for mediation with the Defender of Rights, “However, it is up to the administration to adapt, to organize its own universal accessibility, including for people who are not autonomous and will not be so tomorrow with digital”.

Despite ten years of action to reduce the non-take-up rate, it has not dropped. On the contrary, believes Daniel Verger, head of studies and research at Secours Catholique, who published a report in 2021 with the Observatory of non-recourse to rights and services (Odenore): “We have seen an increase over the last few years for the RSA and family allowances. Which is quite paradoxical compared to the greater awareness that we see at the government level.” To finally lower this rate, the idea of ​​automating payments comes up regularly. Candidate in 2017, Emmanuel Macron already mentioned the subject, before talking about it again in 2022. And this time, a program seems well and truly underway. But it will not be an automation per se. “In any case, there will remain an active step to be taken by the userexplains sociologist Clara Deville. He will never see an RSA drop directly into his account without having requested it. There is this idea, very rooted, that it is necessary to have an active approach in the request for a social benefit.

We are therefore moving towards the creation of a single database on which the employers will pay the payslips, and where the beneficiary will come to complete the information by adding other supporting documents requested. It will then be up to the various organizations to come and consult this database in order to calculate an allowance. But the beneficiary will still have to fill out an application form to start this aid. Before being implemented, however, this solution will have to overcome a number of technical and legal obstacles, believes Pierre Gravoin, co-author of the report on non-recourse: “First of all, you have to have a clear interface between the different administrations. Then, the exchanges raise ethical questions: do the people concerned want their personal information to be shared? Legal questions too, because this project requires a massification data exchanges Finally, on the technical level, how does the State set up an interface allowing a massive and fluid exchange of personal data of individuals? Admittedly, the withholding tax worked well, but only one administration was involved, whereas here, it’s a whole network that will have to be put in place.

There remains one question, and a sizeable one: by reducing the non-take-up rate, will public finances be able to keep up? Each year, France devotes 33.5% of its GDP to social benefits. This represents, for example, before the health crisis in 2019, a budget of 761.4 billion euros according to the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees). A sum that takes into account health and old-age expenses and support allowances (RSA, unemployment, family, housing, poverty, etc.). Could the State follow if the third of people who do not take the steps began to claim their allowances? For the RSA alone, it would be necessary to add between three and five billion euros per year, according to estimates by DREES and Secours Catholique. And it would be, all aid combined, several tens of billions of additional euros that would have to be budgeted. By way of comparison, social fraud was only estimated at 2.3 billion euros for the three RSA, APL and activity bonus allowances in 2018, according to the National Family Allowance Fund.

The question arises all the more as a habit has been taken by Bercy. Each budget is constructed not by estimating the number of beneficiaries, but the number of users who will take the steps. In other words, a rate of non-use is taken into account in the calculation of the budgets. When creating the activity bonus, which was claimed by few people in its old formula, Bercy had expected a rate of nearly 50% for the first year. “It’s well knownsays sociologist Clara Deville. The budget envelopes for the RSA or for the other benefits are planned with simulation hypotheses which include non-recourse rates. If this rate were to drop, Bercy should therefore consider higher assumptions for its budgets.

Finally, reducing this non-take-up raises a final question: who will pay for these increases? Because part of the benefits is paid directly by the departments, in particular disability allowances and the RSA. In 2009, when the State decentralized the payment of the RSA, it assured the Departmental Councils that compensation would be paid to them, to avoid straining their budgets. In the first year, 90.4% of expenses related to the active solidarity income were reimbursed by the State. But in 2015, this rate rose to 61.3%, and it has fallen to 55% today, according to the National Observatory for Social Action. For its president Jean-Louis Sanchez, the risk of seeing departmental councils no longer manage to follow is real. “If an additional third of potential beneficiaries obtained the RSA tomorrow, that would mean that the departments would have to finance one and a half billion more expenses. This is a considerable sum which would hit the most fragile departments hard.he says. This is the reason why we cannot imagine for a single moment a generalization of the automatic payment of RSA allowances without rediscussing the methods of financing. This is the difficulty of the exercise: on the one hand, the desire to improve things is displayed, but on the other, no one seems ready to assume the consequences.