The Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, announced the launch of a mission on the feasibility of combining these two documents, in order to fight against “illegal medical tourism”.
Are we heading towards the disappearance of the Vitale card, this sesame that the French present for the management of their health expenses? The government is considering its merger with the identity cardannounced Gabriel Attal in an interview with Parisian (article reserved for subscribers), Monday, May 29. An interministerial mission should determine “how and in what time frame it is possible”adds the Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts. What is the purpose of such a project? What would this new two-in-one map look like? Franceinfo returns to the details of this measure, still in the embryonic stage.
1 What would be the purpose of this merger?
This measure is part of a vast plan against social fraud presented in outline by the government on Monday, nearly three weeks after another plan against tax evasion. The purpose of this merger, the details of the implementation of which have yet to be clarified, is to make it possible to combat the “illegal medical tourism”, assured Gabriel Attal in the columns of Parisian Monday.
According to the minister Delegate in charge of Public Accountssome people coming to France use “someone else’s Carte Vitale for care”. More broadly, the interest is to fight against loans or “rentals” of vital cards. The merger would be “a measure of simplification and an additional guarantee on the identity of the person and the associated rights”believes Gabriel Attal.
2 What could this new vital card look like?
The form that this possible new card would take is still unclear. “We can imagine a model where, from a certain date, when you redo your identity card, it automatically becomes your Vitale card”, advanced the Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts, without further details.
The General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) and the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) have already worked on the technical feasibility of such a project, and have produced a report consulted by BFMTV. One of the avenues suggested consists in registering the social security number in a compartment of the chip of the new national electronic identity card, distributed since August 2021. The other option mentioned includes the integration of the social security number in the QR code found on the back of these new identity cards.
A prefiguration mission common to the Ministries of Public Accounts, Health and the Interior will be launched by the beginning of July “in order to work on the technical and legal implementation” of this measure, according to a joint press release issued on Tuesday. The conclusions are expected before the end of the year. However, the timing of the measure remains uncertain: the worksite “cannot be envisaged as long as the production times of the cards [d’identité] have not returned to normal”, insists Gabriel Attal. Currently, it takes three months on average for all passport and identity card renewal procedures.
A similar system is already used in Portugal, Sweden and Belgium, says the minister. The Belgians have thus merged the social information system card and the identity card since 2014.
3 Why the application of this measure promises to be complex?
This merger of the Vitale card and the identity card comes up against several pitfalls. To fight against social fraud, a biometric Vitale card project was already in the pipeline. A budget of 20 million euros had even been allocated to it as part of an amending finance bill adopted in August 2022. The proposal to merge the two cards seems to signify the abandonment of this biometric vital card.
According to the IGF and Igas report, quoted by AFP, “a migration of the social security number to identity documents would make it possible to respond to usurpation fraud”while the use of biometrics for the vital card “would present more difficulties than useful contributions”, besides a cost “prohibitive”. “I would have liked a more immediate measure, we could have moved very quickly to the biometric vital card”regretted Olivier Marleix, president of the LR group in the National Assembly, on RTL on Tuesday.
Questioned during this preliminary work, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil) expressed some reluctance to this merger, which it explains in a press release on Tuesday. It recommends partitioning the social security number from the other data contained in the document’s chip, and opposes its being written on the card itself, including in the form of a QR code. The Cnil pleads to include in the law the fact that any insured person can “oppose the registration of his social security number on his identity document”, the Vitale card not being compulsory. However, it judges that its merger with the identity card is “the least intrusive and least risky solution” among the avenues considered to fight against social fraud.
On reading this report, Gabriel Attal believes for his part that “the Cnil does not oppose it, that the directions of the various ministries do not oppose it, that the representatives of doctors do not oppose it”he said on Tuesday during a visit to the National Family Allowance Fund in Paris.