“Neither stigmatization nor instrumentalization” swears the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts. Gabriel Attal unveiled, this Monday, May 29 in the newspaper The Parisianthe measures of its plan against social fraud, aiming to double the adjustments by 2027. Three weeks after an initial plan centered on the fight against tax fraud, and at a time when French accounts are being scrutinized by tax agencies rating, the government wants to dip into every pocket of fraud.
“Our desire is to look at where the situations of fraud are and respond to them, without stigmatization, without instrumentalization,” the minister told journalists on Monday, and “not to be in denial of a large part of the left nor in the lies of a large part of the far right”. Very difficult to assess, social fraud represents a shortfall of several billion euros. For social benefits alone, this is estimated at between 6 and 8 billion euros per year according to the Court of Auditors.
Three billion euros per year of recovery
The minister is giving himself ten years to carry out the social fraud project, with a first stage in 2027: “twice as many results as in 2022”, i.e. a target of three billion euros in recovery per year, said Gabriel Attal, recalling that these adjustments have already increased by 35% over the past five years.
For this, he promises the creation of a thousand additional jobs during this five-year period and an investment of one billion euros in information systems.
Merger of the vital card and the identity card
Among the symbolic announcements, the government is considering a merger between the Vitale card and the identity card in order to fight against the loan and rental of the Vitale card to benefit from free care. “We can imagine a model where, from a certain date, when you redo your identity card it automatically becomes your Vitale card,” said the minister, adding that a prefiguration mission would be launched by summer and could reach conclusions by the end of the year. But this announcement was apparently not the subject of consultation within the government since an executive from the Ministry of the Interior reacted immediately and warned against such a “technically impossible” measure.
By the way, the idea of a biometric Vitale card seems abandoned, especially given its cost.
Retirees abroad targeted
The government also wants to target pensioners living outside European borders in order to better identify those who have died but continue to receive benefits.
This announcement comes after 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, said the minister who recalled that more than a million pensions were paid abroad, half of them outside Europe and 300,000 in Algeria. The extension of the measure would target retirees over 85 years of age.
Strengthen residency requirements
Also in connection with foreign countries, Gabriel Attal wants 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 planned, to benefit from family allowances or the minimum old age, indicates the minister. The same goes for housing aid (APL) which only requires eight months of presence for the time being.
And for businesses?
Regarding fraud in employer contributions, Gabriel Attal intends to increase the means of Urssaf to limit fraud, through hiring and better cross-checking of data.
In addition, the plan provides for the payment at source of the contributions of micro-entrepreneurs by the platforms that make them work, like Uber or Deliveroo, because some under-declare, which according to the minister represents “a bomb delayed social security” insofar as they do not contribute enough.