Thursday, February 9, 2023, a bill aimed at generalizing the €1 meal in university canteens will be discussed in the National Assembly. Will the deputies vote for this device?
Will all meals in university restaurants go to €1? This is what Fatiha Keloua Hachi, Nupes deputy of the 8e constituency of Seine-Saint-Denis. This Thursday, February 9, the National Assembly is debating a bill that it tabled so that all students do not have to pay more than one euro per meal, as the government had done between January 2021 and the end of the academic year. Since then, only scholarship holders can benefit from such a rate.
However, according to the elected official, “during the few months of applications (from the generalization of meals at €1, editor’s note), there will have been almost as many non-scholarship students as scholarship students to have benefited from the measure, and the number number of meals distributed will have been multiplied by five.” For her, “the success of this device actually testifies to the failure of the student grant system.”
Thus, Fatiha Keloua Hachi proposes to the deputies to adopt a text which provides that “the pricing of the meals distributed by the regional centers of university works, in all their catering sites, cannot be higher than 1 euro.” A device that she wishes to compensate by “the creation of an additional excise tax on tobacco.”
Macronist deputies oppose it
Before its arrival in the National Assembly, the bill was studied by deputies in the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education. Composed in the majority of elected Macronists, the commission modified the text which arrives in the hemicycle, on the proposal of the deputies Anne Brugnera (Rennaissance), Sophie Mette (MoDem) and Anne Le Hénanff (Horizons), by removing the limit of the price at €1, which is the very essence of the text. “The lasting extension of this very social pricing to all students would contravene the principle of equity insofar as it would apply without conditions of resources, to the wealthiest as well as to the poorest”, we justify in the ranks of the majority.
Fatiha Keloua Hachi does not lose hope since she has tabled an amendment which will be put to the vote of the deputies, which aims to restore the initial version of her text by offering “every student, twice a day, a meal whose price cannot exceed one euro” on university catering sites. “This is an emergency measure, which tends to fight against food insecurity among students pending a substantial reform of the scholarship system,” she defends. Will she be heard?