three questions on the tightening of access to social benefits for foreigners

With the immigration bill, access to social benefits will be tightened for foreigners. Unless these provisions are censored by the Constitutional Council.

The immigration bill was definitively adopted by Parliament on December 19 after long debates but it must still be validated by the Constitutional Council. The Wise Men must render their decision around 4:30 p.m. Thursday January 25 on this criticized text, with the hope on the left, and even in the presidential camp, of seeing a large part of it censored.

Within this bill, there are in particular social benefits for foreigners whose access conditions will be tightened. Franceinfo answers three questions to help you see more clearly on this sensitive subject of the bill.

What social benefits are affected?

There are mainly family benefits which include in particular family allowances and the back-to-school allowance. There is also the personalized autonomy allowance (APA), paid by the departments, which concerns those over 60. And finally personalized housing allowances (APL). The tightening of access conditions concerns all foreigners – in a legal situation – who do not come from the European Union.

All these benefits listed, foreigners could benefit immediately. With the law, they will have to wait five years or two and a half years if they work. Except for APLs, this allowance will be released after three months for those who are working. An important clarification, this only concerns those who will arrive in France. Foreigners who are already present in the country and who already benefit from these social benefits will keep them.

How many people are affected?

The government, the deputies or the senators who worked on this text do not know the number of people affected by this tightening. The Family Allowance Fund (CAF) which pays these subsidies does not know this either because, until now, it did not have to ask its beneficiaries how long they have been in France, or how long they have been there. working.

Four economists committed against this law have, however, made an estimate. Based on an INSEE survey, they estimate that 110,000 people will be penalized by these provisions. Their analysis is validated by Louis Ragot, an economist at Paris Ouest Nanterre University who has been working on these questions for 20 years: “They used the ‘Family Budget’ survey in which you have more information than that available to the CAF”, explains the economist. The figure of 110,000“it’s an order of magnitude, it allows you to understand that it won’t be a few hundred people, but that it won’t be a million people either. Maybe in reality it will be 85,000 or 150,000”continues Louis Ragot.

It is therefore the equivalent of the population of a city like Rouen, around 2% of foreigners who are in France – who will lose (for some) – several hundred euros, even up to 1,000 euros, for pay for daycare, their accommodation or school supplies. For these people, the difference is enormous but as Lionel Ragot explains, “the impact on the finances of social protection will be marginal. This is not what will save social protection in the face of the difficulties linked to demographic aging”. If we do the calculations, this amounts to 740 million euros in savings out of 70 billion euros in social and family benefits paid each year by the CAF, or a little more than 1%.

Can this toughening be censored before the Constitutional Council?

As franceinfo explained after the vote on the bill, the provisions for tightening access to these social benefits can be censored by the Constitutional Council because they differentiate between regular foreign nationals and French people and can induce a break in the “principle of ‘equality’ in relation to social benefits. This principle of equality was enshrined by the Constitutional Council in 1990.

But as Jean-François Kerléo, professor of public law at the University of Aix-Marseille, points out to franceinfo, there are in France “historically, a universalist conception of equality but which is increasingly linked to nationality and national preference. The question is then whether the Constitutional Council will protect this universalist conception or follow the current movement”.