Every morning, Marie Dupin slips into the skin of a personality, an event, a place or a fact at the heart of the news.
France has just been singled out by the Council of Europe for its numerous shortcomings towards people with disabilities, and particularly regrets the absence of a “coherent and coordinated policy on disability”. The wheelchair is a symbol of this. It can be manual, electric, standing or multi-position. It weighs from 7 to 250 kg and runs from 500 to over 50,000 euros.
For each pathology, each person has their chair. More than one million people in France used a wheelchair. It is literally the extension of the body, the legs, sometimes the arms. It must therefore be adjusted, adapted, as if hand-sewn, to ensure the autonomy of disabled people for whom every ordinary gesture for a valid person becomes a tour de force.
Shortly after his election in 2017, Emmanuel Macron experienced it during a tennis match. The president in a wheelchair to promote France’s candidacy for the 2024 Olympic Games. But if the wheelchair helped France to obtain the organization of the games, we cannot say that it gave it back to me.
A hundred euros reimbursed by the Sécu
The wheelchair is still not covered by social security. However, since 2005, the law provides accessibility for all and a right to full compensation, but we are far, very far, from the account. While some disabled people benefit from full support thanks to various aids, social security only reimburses a few hundred euros for manual wheelchairs which cost between 4,000 and 7,000 euros. Balance sheet: a remainder to be paid after reimbursement by Health Insurance of 364 million euros according to a report from October 2022
In terms of accessibility in housing or transport, France has become the champion in terms of fraud and derogations so as not to have to do the necessary work. In Paris, only one metro line is fully accessible. The Elan law of 2019 drastically lowered the percentage of new housing that must be accessible: from 100% to… 20%.
With the approach of the Olympic Games, the government has recently launched a “consultation” on the Internet with catering and hotel professionals to draw up an “inventory of accessibility”. But 20 years after the passage of the 2005 law, is there still time to consult? Next week, Emmanuel Macron, well planted on both legs, will chair the national disability conference. His announcements are eagerly awaited by the million people for whom the wheelchair allows them to move forward in life, while their rights are constantly declining.