Tribune. “What I want to do with the RSA [revenu de solidarité active]this is exactly what we have been deploying for a few weeks with the youth employment contract for 18-25 year olds. » While, for months, the government has refused to open the RSA to 18-25 year olds, arguing that the situation of young people is specific, the candidate Macron is today proposing to extend the characteristics of a contract intended specifically for young people … to all RSA beneficiaries!
Emmanuel Macron therefore wishes to introduce stricter conditionality for obtaining the RSA, with an obligation to devote 15 to 20 hours a week to an activity with the aim of professional integration – a proposal similar to that of his right-wing rival Valérie Pécresse . “At the same time”, he proposes to pay social assistance ” to the source “automatically, in order to fight against non-use.
These two characteristics (conditionality and automaticity) are however contradictory. The candidate’s two proposals will not achieve the stated objectives, because the diagnosis on which they are based is simply not the right one.
Let’s start with conditionality.
The question is recurring on the right. It was the subject of a bill in 2017 carried by Guillaume Peltier, deputy LR and today vice-president of Reconquest! A similar measure was decided in February 2016 by the departmental council of Haut-Rhin (LR), in the form of 7 hours of compulsory volunteering to receive the RSA. The administrative justice had canceled this decision…
Less attractive social minima
But the Council of State quashed the cancellation, judging that the integration contract, “personalized design” can legally provide “volunteer actions on the condition that they can contribute to a better professional integration of the beneficiary and remain compatible with the search for a job”. Logically, these activities can only be offered to RSA beneficiaries closest to employment, those engaged in a professional integration process.
Since 2018, the possibility of conditioning RSA to hours of activity is therefore already possible… It is certainly possible to change the law, but for what? Oblige the departments to compel the beneficiaries of the RSA to work? This would be a particular vision of liberalism and decentralization… Make the legislative framework more flexible? Today, it is consistent: the obligations must be made with a real concern for integration; it is therefore not a matter of breaking stones on the side of the road in order to punish or stigmatize.
You have 63.82% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.