Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Tuesday the abolition of the specific solidarity allowance (ASS) for unemployed people at the end of their rights, who will switch to Active Solidarity Income (RSA).
What does it change ?
What is SSA?
Managed by France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi) and financed by the State, ASS is an allowance created in 1984 intended for job seekers who have exhausted their unemployment insurance rights.
A jobseeker over 50 can also choose ASS rather than traditional unemployment compensation if it is more favorable to them.
To benefit from it, you must be actually looking for a job, have five years of salaried activity in the 10 years preceding the end of the employment contract and not exceed a monthly resource ceiling.
As of April 1, 2023, this ceiling was 1,271.90 euros for a single person (1,998.70 for a couple).
The amount of the allowance is 18.17 euros per day (545.10 per month).
The ASS is paid for six months, renewable.
To do this, you must continue to meet the conditions (resources, registration, effective job search, etc.).
This is not the so-called Unédic pre-retirement scheme which allows seniors over 62 to retain their rights to unemployment insurance until they retire at full rate.
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Who is concerned ?
At the end of 2021, ASS was received by 321,900 beneficiaries, according to a document published in September 2023 by the statistical service of social ministries (Drees).
For comparison, the RSA concerned 2.1 million people at the end of 2022, according to the same source.
More than one in two beneficiaries (57%) is aged 50 or over, a proportion which can be explained by the conditions of access to ASS, according to data from the end of 2019. They are mainly men (55 %).
And two out of three beneficiaries (65%) are single people.
As ASS is a benefit intended for very long-term unemployed people, 75% of beneficiaries have been registered as job seekers for at least three years and 54% for at least five years.
33% of beneficiaries have joined the system for at least five years.
Read also Unemployed people at the end of their rights will no longer have specific allowance and will switch to RSA
What is the difference compared to RSA?
The amount of the ASS is slightly lower than the level of the RSA for a single person (around 608 euros).
But the big difference is that ASS beneficiaries continue to acquire quarters for the calculation of their retirement, which is not the case with the RSA.
The ASS also allows accumulation with other income, provided that the monthly resource ceiling of 1,998.70 for a couple is not exceeded.
The resource ceiling for a couple eligible for RSA is more than half lower (911.63 euros).
“We are going to have men and especially women who will find themselves having nothing at all (...) because there is, for example, a minimum wage for their spouse,” points out Denis Gravouil, of the CGT.
For the president of the CFE-CGC executives union François Hommeril, the government is “little by little removing the provisions that exist and allowing people who are in a momentary precarious situation in their career to still acquire retirement rights.”
“You will be able to survive, but the good thing is that when you retire you will be even poorer,” Mr. Hommeril quips.
By “removing the ASS, we remove from the job seeker the validation of quarters for the basic pension and the obtaining of points for the supplementary (retirement)”, notes Michel Beaugas, of Force Ouvrière.