The wait is long. Endless, even. “Originally, I was planning to go on a trip abroad in November,” says Nicolas, 33. Taken by a doubt before his reservation, this engineer in aeronautics realizes that his passport is expired. “I wanted to make an appointment in my town, which does not redo identity documents. I phoned several other town halls, and the fastest appointment I found referred me to.. .17 September”. On the phone, Nicolas lets out a long sigh. “I was informed of an additional delay of ten weeks before being able to receive my passport. I had to give up my trip.” The young man had yet scoured the town halls, before admitting defeat. “I live in Loire-Atlantique, but I phoned as far as Brittany. It’s hopeless.”
Like many, Nicolas has experienced appointment times that have exploded due to an unprecedented influx of requests. The confinements have increased the stock of papers to be renewed. However, since the ebb of the pandemic and the opening of borders, the desire to travel has never been so high. Add to that the imminence of patent or baccalaureate exams, each of which requires an identity document, and you will understand that it now takes two months on average for a renewal request, compared to fifteen days to three weeks previously. To reduce the wait, the government announced that a 30% increase in staff had been deployed in the field since the beginning of the year. As a bonus, 400 collection devices, equipment to register an application for an identity card or passport, will be distributed in town halls.
“A great weariness sets in”
“We’ll see if it works, worries Nicolas. We’re so used to waiting.” The engineer not only refers to his papers but also to other daily tasks. “Do you want to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist? Are you waiting. A dentist? Same. An ENT for your child? Same,” he lists. In the administrative as in the medical field, waiting has gradually infiltrated the existence of many French people. A priori derisory, this accumulation of small and large delays ends up weighing heavily on the lives of some. “These two areas are strongly associated with the action of the State in the minds of the population, explains Vincent Béal, doctor of political science and lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg. When people have the impression of having a lower quality of service in these areas, this can feed resentment”. An impression of abandonment and downgrading, too. “A great weariness sets in, sighs Isabelle, 58. We have the impression of being neglected by services that were effective a few years ago”.
According to the barometer of the Paul Delouvrier Institute carried out by the firm Kantar, 39% of French people consider public services less accessible since the health crisis, and 33% that they are less close to their users. According to Pierre-Yves Baudot, professor of sociology at Paris-Dauphine University, this feeling of relegation is not without effect at the ballot box: “The presence of the State mobilizes voters. Very logically, its withdrawal plays therefore a role in electoral demobilization”. Other factors come into play, but “the disappearance of public services would have an effect on the increase in abstention”, he points out. Faced with what is felt to be a failure of public power, citizens would become demobilized, and would therefore turn their backs on the voting booth.
A clear illustration of this lengthening of the deadlines: the Family allowance fund also concentrates the testimonies of users who have the impression of being confronted with a seized up machine. “Don’t talk to me about the CAF!” Lily gets annoyed. At 49, this Jura woman says she is “exasperated” by the administrative procedures necessary to update her file. “As soon as I have to change information for a change in income, I know that I had better be patient because I won’t see the result in my bank account for two months, she explains. Two months, for my small salary, it’s a long time.” Delays of which the service is aware, but which also depend “on the time necessary to process complex aid”. “The average time today for all of our agencies is 16.5 days, we specify to CAF. But disparities may exist, depending on the number of files to be processed and the type of files, some may be more complex depending on the situation.
Users must be patient. On Facebook, the Val-d’Oise agency has even decided to warn beneficiaries… that no appointment is possible. On May 2, she explained that she was examining situation checks that arrived between “October 21 and January 19”, and specified on social networks: “No need to move or contact us by phone. Consult your “My account” space on Caf.fr to follow the evolution of your request.”
Digitized public services
An instruction that is in line with the digitization of public services put forward by the government. “During this five-year term, the development of digital approaches in addition to physical approaches has played a decisive role in reducing delays”, we underlined in the cabinet of Amélie de Montchalin, former Minister of Transformation and Public Service. Lily therefore favors the internet, not without frustration: “Before, I knew that I could negotiate with someone. Now, I am only facing a computer.” “The administration is often one of the only tangible experiences that the citizen has of the State, explains Pierre-Yves Baudot. These difficulties produce the impression that it no longer works.” In some regions, the lack of access to public services only reinforces this impression.
The advance of medical deserts is a glaring example. “It took me more than a month to find a dentist for my youngest child for a consultation which turned out to be quite urgent: he had four cavities, one of which was in a fairly advanced state”, says Cécile. This mother of a large family, aged “soon to be 50 years old” and residing in Isère since September, is struggling to find practitioners for her nine children. “My eldest is 24, and I didn’t have the same issues when he was younger. The longer the delays get, the more I feel like the whole healthcare sector is deteriorating. ”
A frustrating, sometimes infuriating wait. After her gynecologist moved south, Elisa, 25, diagnosed with endometriosis, had to wait six months to get an appointment with a new gynecologist. “They explained to me that I was going to have to start my exams again. In the meantime, I’m still in pain.” His case is far from isolated. In January 2019, a study by the Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics Department indicated that 167,000 women of childbearing age live in an “obstetric desert”: a town far from a maternity hospital, and where there are not enough midwives.
Access to care, to administration, to aid… “Deadlines are a way of doing politics: they imply favoring one group over another, creating inequalities in access to public services” , analyzes Pierre-Yves Baudot. The allocation of the Disability Compensation Benefit (PCH), on which the sociologist worked, is another illustration. It makes it possible to partially compensate for the accommodation of a disabled person, but is only released after the visit of specialists sent by the State. “The time that these are carried out, sometimes a year passes before the person can benefit from them, explains the sociologist. Those who have money do without help, when those who do not have any suffer the wait.” Deadlines more political than you might think.