The coronavirus health crisis is now coupled with a social crisis. "The number of beneficiaries of the RSA is on the rise everywhere in the country", underlines Frédéric Bierry, the president of Social affairs of the Assembly of the departments of France (ADF), moreover president (LR) of the departmental council of Bas- Rhine.
Since the start of confinement in mid-March, more and more people, aged over 25 and unable to claim unemployment benefits, have received active solidarity income (RSA). According to the ADF (Assembly of Departments of France), the increase goes from 2.4% in Eure to 5% in Bas-Rhin and increases to 10% in Seine-Saint-Denis where the owner of the department, Stéphane Troussel, alerted Emmanuel Macron to "this brutal and rapid increase".
“Certain controls were lifted by the State for RSA entrants during confinement. It could therefore be that there were more beneficiaries during this period given the context ", analyzes Pierre Monzani, director general of the ADF, who fears" a social crisis unprecedented for a century ". Because “we see people appearing in social breakdown who was not in the profiles observed until then, like small autoentrepreneurs who had launched their activity recently,” explains Jean-Luc Gleyze, president (PS) of the council department of Gironde.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, “these are people who accumulated small jobs, had fixed-term contracts, Uber drivers, temporary workers, people who tried to make ends meet by accumulating hours of vacation, who did not have worked enough and did not contribute enough to be entitled to unemployment benefit ”.
"45 to 50 million euros more"
Stéphane Troussel, the president of the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council, is also alarmed by the financial difficulties which are likely to worsen in his department this year. “We have already spent 7.5 million euros more than expected for the RSA this year. If this continues, we will reach 45 to 50 million euros more by the end of the year, "he worries, stressing that with the drop in transfer taxes (DMTO) to be expected in departments, revenues will decrease in the coming months.
Remember that since the law of December 2003 on decentralization, it is the departments that pay the RSA to their citizens. At the time, the State had promised that it would reimburse "to the nearest euro" this new charge, by virtue of national solidarity. The ace. For the past twenty years, the departments have seen their social spending soar and the promise of the State unraveled, regardless of the government in place.
For 2020, the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council had planned a budget of 532 million euros under the RSA - an amount of which the State will only compensate a little more than half, which leads Stéphane Troussel to demand, once again, the "renationalisation of the RSA". Meanwhile, the government of Edouard Philippe announced on May 29 "a massive support plan" of 4.5 billion euros for communities, including 2.7 billion euros to departments to "respond to the emergency Promised the Prime Minister.
