The joint committee, which has brought together 14 parliamentarians since Monday, December 18 to try to reach a compromise on the immigration law, was interrupted during the night before resuming discussions on Tuesday which are now stuck on the question of personalized housing assistance. (APL) granted to foreigners. A sign of the difficulties to be concluded, the final vote, scheduled for the afternoon, was postponed to 7 p.m. in the Senate and to 9:30 p.m. in the Assembly, but the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, seems determined to bring the majority towards a compromise: on Tuesday she submitted to the deputies of the Renaissance group a proposal for an agreement with the right on the question.
A five-year deadline desired by the LR
The right and the presidential majority seemed to stick to their respective positions on Monday: will the attempt at compromise be hampered by the question of housing allowances? The LRs wish to restrict access to social benefits for foreign nationals by subjecting them to a “waiting period” of five years of presence on the territory, reduced to two and a half years for those who work.
On the side of the presidential majority, the leader of the Renaissance deputies, Sylvain Maillard, declared Tuesday that his camp “will not give in[ait] not [sur les aides au logement et que, si LR maintenait ses exigences,] there [aurait] no agreement.” “We reject the principle of national preference. We will not give in on this,” he insisted on Europe 1/CNews, declaring that the question of the APL was not part of the compromise found with the LR.
Elisabeth Borne, for her part, proposed a change in the majority’s position, by submitting the idea of making access to APL conditional on five years of presence in the territory for foreigners who do not work and on three months for those who working.
Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate, argued Monday evening that the majority’s initial position “does not[était] not in accordance with its commitments.
The modification favored by the right would substantially change the conditions for granting family allowances and housing assistance to foreign nationals: today, housing assistance is open to foreigners in a legal situation whose main residence is in France, and are accessible after a few months in the accommodation. Family allowances are available after six months of presence in the country.
10% of foreigners registered with CAF
If the subject appears hot within the political class, it is however today impossible to determine what is the percentage of foreigners among the beneficiaries of housing aid distributed by the CAF. This has only published on the question the percentage of foreigners out of the total registered population (who can benefit from other allowances distributed by the organization without receiving housing assistance). She estimates that 10% of CAF registrants are foreign nationals. According to TF1which had access to figures from the National Family Allowance Fund (Cnaf), aid for foreigners (European or non-EU) corresponded in 2019 to 13% of the total allowances paid, or 9 billion euros.
The Cnaf nevertheless publishes annual activity reports which provide information on the total housing allowances paid. In 2022, some 5.7 million beneficiaries will receive housing assistance for a total amount of 15.1 billion euros.
These figures, which include beneficiaries of three housing aids (personalized housing assistance, social housing allowance and family housing allowance), do not make it possible to distinguish national beneficiaries from foreigners. According to the Ministry of Housing, housing assistance amounts on average in 2022 to 202 euros per month and per beneficiary.