Sunday June 9, after the announcement of early legislative elections following the dissolution of the National Assembly, the head of the National Rally (RN) Marine Le Pen assured that her party was “ready to defend the interests of the French, ready to put end to this mass immigration”. For RN voters, this question is central. This Tuesday, June 18, in the columns of Parisian, the president of the party, Jordan Bardella, tipped to be the future Prime Minister in the event of his camp’s victory, declared that his action would be carried out in “two stages”. “The first is that of emergencies around purchasing power, security and immigration,” he says. Without detailing the measures… On two crucial points, social assistance and the abolition of State Medical Aid (AME), the effectiveness and legality of the developments desired by the RN must still be demonstrated.
Social assistance: the three axes of the RN
Reserve social assistance for the French, condition access to solidarity benefits on five years of presence in France, ensure national priority for housing and employment: these measures are at the heart of the RN program. For its leaders, there is even less question of giving it up since immigration and purchasing power are at the top of the motivations for the June 9 vote. All will require a review of existing legislation. And some will have to go through the sieve of the Constitutional Council, which Emmanuel Macron may request. Reserving social assistance for the French could in particular be deemed illegal because it leads to a breakdown in equality between nationals and foreigners. And all the more so if it concerns contributory social assistance (such as unemployment compensation) linked to the payment of contributions.
On the other hand, establishing criteria for length of residence for solidarity benefits will be considered differently. There are, in fact, already conditions for obtaining it. Thus, receiving the RSA requires proof of five years of presence in France, the idea being to first promote integration through work, a reason that the Constitutional Council has validated. And if he objected for questions of form to the articles of the immigration law providing for such a system, there is no reason for him to oppose it tomorrow as long as the duration would be reasonable. As for national priority in terms of employment, it is, in theory, already provided for by law, even if it is not always effective. Checking that no French or European is available is therefore legal, with this caveat: it will require significant human resources.
AME: costly removal
Hammered for years by the National Rally, the abolition of State medical aid was included in the program defended in 2022 by Marine Le Pen. The populist party criticizes it for its cost and accuses it of fueling migratory flows. This system for providing care for foreigners in an irregular situation would therefore be replaced by “vital emergency aid”, reserved for situations “endangering the vital prognosis or which could lead to a serious and lasting deterioration in the state of health”. A reform already adopted by the Senate last year, but rejected by the government.
Specialists are skeptical about the expected effects: “The cost may, on the contrary, increase, because its beneficiaries, without access to prevention and to the treating physician, would present themselves in hospitals with more serious pathologies than if they had been able to be treated earlier”, assures Yann Bourgueil, former director of the Institute for Research and Documentation in Health Economics. As for the effect on illegal immigration, it would be minimal: a report published at the end of 2023 concluded that the AME was only one factor among others explaining the choice of certain populations to settle in our country.