The president of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, says that the State gives a billion euros to associations helping migrants and that it spends ten times less on expulsions. But it’s wrong.
Migrant aid associations have come under fire from right-wing criticism since the Arras attack. La Cimade is accused of having helped the attacker’s family to remain on French territory when they were to be deported in 2014. Nine years later, Friday October 13, he became the main suspect of a terrorist attack in the Gambetta high school in Arras which cost the life of a literature teacher, Dominique Bernard.
Éric Ciotti, the president of the Les Républicains party, took up this accusation on Thursday, October 26, on France Inter. “We have the State which finances associations which turn against the State”he laments before hoping that France will only help “associations which do not attack the State”.
.@ECiotti wants to cut funding for certain refugee aid associations, including Cimade, which he accuses of “having ensured that Dominique Bernard’s assassin is still in France” #le710Inter pic.twitter.com/MdrTbA6lp1
— France Inter (@franceinter) October 25, 2023
Consequently, the deputy for Alpes-Maritimes defends an amendment to the finance bill for the year 2024 aimed at halving the payments granted to migrant aid associations. “We put a billion [d’euros] for associations and we spend ten times less for expulsions”, he regrets. Really ?
One billion euros for migrant aid associations in 2024
The first figure given by Éric Ciotti is correct. Or rather, it will be. France is in fact preparing to pay one billion euros to associations under the “Immigration, asylum and integration” mission. The amount is included in the budgetary tab – an annex to the 2024 finance bill which has yet to be adopted – detailing “the State’s financial effort in favor of associations”.
These are almost essentially subsidies, the associations being mandated by the State to fulfill a mission of reception, food aid, or even administrative assistance, which it does not do itself and which it subcontracting them, in a way.
This amount has increased in recent years. The 2023 finance bill provided for an effort of 751 million euros for associations acting in this “Immigration, asylum and integration” section. It was estimated at 710 million euros for the year 2022, 522 million euros for 2020 and even 306 million euros for 2018.
These sums increase according to the needs identified by the State, the number of calls for projects launched at the local level by the prefectures to which the associations respond, but also according to the number of entries into the territory with the recent massive arrival of Ukrainian refugees, the consequences of the health crisis on the associative environment as well as the multiplication of the number of associations acting in this or that sector.
No, the state does not spend ten times less on evictions
On the other hand, according to the information available to franceinfo, the State does not spend ten times less money on evictions, contrary to what Eric Ciotti claims. Before any comparison, it must be emphasized that it is very difficult to make an exhaustive estimate of the cost of expulsions because this requires gathering information from very diverse sources and not always easy to quantify, ranging from the cost of an arrest to that of from chartering planes to the cost of surveillance by law enforcement.
But a parliamentary report still attempted a calculation. Led by Jean-Noël Barrot, then MoDem deputy and now Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition, and by Alexandre Holroyd, Renaissance deputy, the document was presented in 2019. It concluded that the State had spent 468.45 million euros to carry out nearly 34,000 forced removals in 2018 from mainland France and overseas. Half a billion euros. The certainly imperfect comparison between this amount dating from 2018 and the forecasts for 2024 is the only possible one. It shows that France is preparing to pay twice as much to migrant aid associations in 2024 as what it spends on expulsions and not ten times more.
It is also possible to compare only the amounts for the year 2018. That year, the State paid 306 million to associations for the “Immigration, asylum and integration” mission. It therefore devoted 162.45 million euros more to expulsions than to associations.
But the main conclusion of the parliamentary report was quite different and leads to another reflection. According to him, forced removal costs France three to five times more than a return to the country of origin assisted with transport but also support for reintegration.