The Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal unveiled last night, in the columns of the newspaper The Parisian, its plan to combat social fraud. According to the Court of Auditors, it represents between 6 and 8 billion euros per year, while state services barely manage to recover 1.6 billion each year. “Our desire is to look at where the situations of fraud are and respond to them, without stigmatization, without instrumentalization,” said Gabriel Attal.
The stated objective is to double the number of adjustments by 2027, for a total of 3 billion euros recovered from the state coffers. To do this, the government plans to merge identity and vital cards, in order to fight against the fraudulent use of the latter. This should also be accompanied by the creation of a thousand additional positions in the fight against social fraud, as well as an investment of one billion euros in information systems.
Increase controls on foreign pensioners
Gabriel Attal also wishes to “strengthen” the conditions of residence in France “to benefit from social allowances”. It will now be necessary to spend nine months of the year in the country, against six currently, to benefit from family allowances or the minimum old age. The same applies to housing assistance, which today requires only eight months of presence. The government would also like social protection bodies to be able to check airline passenger lists, in order to detect potential fraud.
In its plan, the government is also interested in a particularly thorny subject, that of retirees living outside French borders. The idea is to better identify those who have died, but whose relatives continue to receive benefits. This announcement follows an experiment carried out since September in Algeria, during which 300 files of “almost centenarian” retirees out of 1,000 files studied were declared non-compliant.
Lower pensions abroad
According to a study published by the National Old Age Insurance Fund, more than one million retirees will live abroad in 2022. This represents around 7.2% of the 15 million beneficiaries of the pension system. This figure is down by 15,000 retirees compared to the previous year. The overwhelming majority of them live in Africa (42%) or Europe (47%). In particular, 300,000 live in Algeria, 163,000 in Portugal, and 150,000 in Spain.
Pensioners residing abroad receive an average monthly pension from the general scheme of 300 euros. In total, pension benefits paid amount to 3.9 billion euros per year, which represents 2.7% of the total amount of pension benefits paid in 2022. A figure much lower than the average, which is around 839 euros.
A difference that can be explained by the low number of full careers among retirees living abroad: Only 26% have contributed enough during all their quarters, compared to 68% for people spending their old age in the borders. of the hexagon.