The government launched a plan against social fraud at the end of May. This phenomenon, which generates a shortfall for the State, nevertheless hides the savings linked to the non-use of social benefits by people who are entitled to them. Four of them confided in franceinfo.
Fight against fraud at all levels. Three weeks after the announcement of its plan against tax evasion, the government unveiled, Tuesday, May 30, measures against social fraud. Bercy evaluates it at ten billion euros, including 2.8 billion in social benefits unduly paid by the family allowance funds. A shortfall less significant than that linked to tax evasion (80 to 100 billion euros, according to the Solidaires Finances union, the only one to provide an estimate) but which the State intends to recover, in particular via the merger, under study, of the Vitale card and the identity card.
>> Concealed work, allowances, health insurance… View the estimated amounts of social fraud in France
However, if nearly 3 billion euros in benefits are wrongly paid, the State saves at least as much because of the non-use of aid by millions of households, notes a study by Drees (PDF). “The rate of non-use of certain services exceeds 30%” in France, such as the minimum old age (50%) or the active solidarity income (34%), recalls vie-publique.fr.
To combat this situation, the government will launch a three-year experiment in September in around ten areas to better detect eligible users who do not receive the RSA, housing allowances and the activity bonus. In the meantime, franceinfo has tried to better understand the phenomenon by questioning the first concerned. Of lack of knowledge of their rights to voluntary non-recourse, four of them explain why they do not receive certain social benefits.
Fazila, temporarily deprived of her sick husband’s daily allowances: “We don’t know what to do”
In 2008, Dawood, an employee in the manufacture of clothing, was placed on sick leave due to throat cancer. Shortly after his hospitalization in Paris for chemotherapy, the company went bankrupt. For his wife Fazila, 53 years old at the time, who takes care of the administrative procedures related to the state of health of her husband, impossible to obtain from Social Security the payment of his daily allowances. Fifteen years later, the anger has not faded.
“Each time I went to Social Security, I was told that my papers were missing… The health insurance social worker told me that she had started the process, but I had no news. .” Her husband’s employer, who has shut down, is also no longer reachable.
Fazila, home help, who has to travel “one and a half hour drive” from her workplace in Hauts-de-Seine to her social security fund in Seine-Saint-Denis to try to resolve the situation, ends up getting discouraged, without her husband having received compensation. “We didn’t know what to do”, breathes Fazila, who adds that he does not know how to use a computer. It was finally through a neighbour, herself an employee of Social Security, that the couple obtained payment of this compensation two years later, ie, in all, 5,000 euros.
Emilie*, eligible for help for parents: “I didn’t have the psychic energy to fill out the papers”
In September 2021, Emilie*, a Spanish teacher, resumes service in the school of her small town in the Rhône after a one-year hiatus linked to maternity leave, then to sick leave for depression. Wishing to spend more time with her two young children, who are experiencing health problems, Emilie then goes part-time. In theory, she is entitled to the shared child education benefit (PreParE), financial assistance from the Family Allowance Fund for parents who reduce or stop their professional activity to care for a child under 3 years old.
When she discovers that the aid is not paid automatically, Emilie is unable to take the necessary steps. “My head was underwater, between my young children, medical appointments, worry about their state of health, the stress of my job… I couldn’t find the energy psychic to fill out the papers”, she explains. After having “drawn from [s]are savings” for a year and a half, Emilie finally completes a file in April 2023. “Looking back, it wasn’t super hard to do, but I needed someone to help me take charge and tell me: ‘We’re going to do the steps together’.“
“When you’re tired, depressed, when you have a baby, when you’re going through something difficult, it’s complicated to take care of your papers.”
The teacher, who should receive around 160 euros per month once her file has been processed, pleads for the automatic payment of social benefits. She also regrets that there is “almost more possibility of being received physically, especially for those, like me, who live in the countryside”despite the Maisons France Services opened in 2020 to facilitate administrative procedures in rural areas.
Brendan waived unemployment benefit and RSA: “I don’t deserve them”
Since he was 17, Brendan, now in his thirties, has worked in a number of more or less “difficult” : waiter, receptionist, oyster farmer, worker, mason, gardener… In 2013, he put his professional life on hiatus for six months to create “a woofing tour of France” – practice of working on a farm in exchange for room and board. Objective: to train in ecological agricultural practices, an area in which he wishes to convert. During this period, he continues to receive the unemployment benefit for return to work (ARE) under his past contracts, without being actively looking for a job, as the rules of Pôle emploi require. . “I felt a little guilty. But since I was working for free [dans les fermes où il était accueilli]it rebalanced the moral balance in my head”he justifies.
However, since the end of his last CDD, in May 2022, Brendan has not taken the necessary steps to benefit again from the ARE, nor from the active solidarity income (RSA). “I have 40,000 euros in my bank account, it’s enough to live for a while without touching the RSA or unemployment, and without working.“ A tidy sum gathered thanks to the savings made when he worked, and to a donation from his grandmother, who transmitted his heritage to his relatives before his death. Brendan therefore believes that he does not “deserve” the social benefits to which he is entitled, and moreover does not know how much he could claim.
“For me, unemployment and the RSA, it’s for people in trouble. I’m not legitimate.”
Brendan, who gave up applying for unemployment benefitat franceinfo
The young man recounts having heard, at the start of his working life, “lots of thoughts” on the “abusive situation of the unemployed and recipients of allowances”. “So when you hit unemployment, after six months you feel like you’ve abused the system – whether that’s true or not.he believes. I worked, but how much did I contribute? When I work for eight months, does that compensate for my six months of unemployment? I don’t want it to be up to others to have my back.”
Mehdi, deprived of unemployment benefits: his employer’s documents “come too late”
The administrative complexity, he knows. Since 2017, Mehdi, 40, has been teaching English in several higher education establishments in Lyon, public and private. Every summer, when his contracts come to an end, he begins his application for unemployment benefit at Pôle Emploi… which he ends up canceling. “Public schools have deferred payment, several months after the lessons are given. The end-of-contract documents arrive very late”, he explains. However, these papers are necessary to trigger the calculation and then the payment of the return to work allowance. He receives “the documents regularly in November, while[‘il a] already started teaching again”, and that he is therefore no longer eligible for this benefit. Again, he does not know how much aid he could receive.
The forties tried to explain his problem to the administration, in vain. “Access to Pôle emploi information is complicated. However, I am educated. It deserves a good shot of simplification, or automation of the payment of aid”, he believes. Mehdi is also reluctant to ask his employer too much on this point, because of the precariousness of his status. “Is it worth putting pressure on, even if it means wasting hours of class?” he wonders. It has therefore integrated the absence of these additional revenues into the management of its budget. “I got into the habit of saving money for the summer”concludes the one who calls himself lucky because, with 30,000 to 40,000 euros in gross income per year, he is not “not in financial precariousness”.
* The first name has been changed at the request of the interviewee.