2023-07-28 21:54:41
Vouchers for the energy bill, collections of hygiene products, collective purchases of fuel, reduction of rates in transport or in school canteens. These are some of the measures that municipalities and other local authorities are deploying in France to fight against rising prices and lighten the bills of their neighbors. They are added to the initiatives launched by the French Government, such as the blocking of energy tariffs and the shopping basket at reduced prices.
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In France, after an electoral campaign led by purchasing power in 2022, the constant rise in prices has become one of the main concerns of the Executive. Immersed for much of the year in the wave of protests against his pension reform, Emmanuel Macron has reactivated the public aid that he already launched during the pandemic. But there are also smaller and local initiatives. Inflation in July was 5%the lowest level in 15 months, but still well above the 2.3% of Spain.
Vouchers, grants and ecological baskets
In the North, one of the departments with the lowest income levels in metropolitan France, cities like Denain have offered each household 50 euros in aid vouchers to spend at local businesses (excluding supermarkets). and in the neighbor Trith-Saint-Leger the City Council has offered all households a check for 100 euros to help them pay their energy bills.
In this context, networks of local organizations, such as community centers for social action, are taking on a fundamental role. Created with the function of helping people with economic difficulties or socially vulnerable, these organizations, dependent on the municipalities, try to regain prominence to help with price pressure.
This is the case of Lorient, one of the main cities in Brittany, the authorities have expanded the income criteria to access subsidized ecological baskets and the so-called solidarity store, where products cost between 10% and 30% of their price. usual.
“The community social action centers offer food aid to cover basic needs, such as the social food store and a basket of vegetables, as well as energy aid,” explains a spokesman for the Breton town hall. “These aids are linked to a scale that takes into account household resources and expenses. And to help people fight rising prices and increase their purchasing power, the city has decided to strengthen this offer for current beneficiaries and extend it to more people in precarious situations.
Transport, energy and food
The main objectives of the initiatives of these local and regional entities are transport, energy and food. The Val-de-Marne department, in the Paris region, has financed an energy voucher of 50 euros for those households with low incomes, but who exceed the requirements to qualify for aid issued by the Government.
In each case, the administration decides which groups are given priority: the Côte-d’Or department, in Burgundy, has created financial aid for singles and couples without children (up to 400 euros per year); The one in Haute-Garonne has renewed its solidarity vouchers for basic necessities, which can go up to 900 euros a year for families with three children.
Despite the increase in food prices, many municipal corporations have frozen the prices of school canteens, such as Paris, Lyon and Marseille. In the case of transport passes, the responsibility of the regions, the increase in energy costs has led most of them to increase fares (Occitania is the exception), although many have chosen to introduce one-euro tickets on some lines.
Associations
In the same context, the associations have also been forced to adapt their social policies: if the subsidies have increased, so have the prices and the number of applicants. Les Restos du Coeur, a major French NGO, estimates it will distribute 170 million meals this year, 28 million more than last year. “In 2022, food distributions in public places increased by 25%”, explains Patrice Douret, president of the association.
Single-parent families, mainly single women with children, represent a quarter of the people served, and their number has increased by 21% in one year. More than half of the people welcomed by Les Restos du Cœur they are less than 25 years old. “We are especially concerned about the 16% increase in the number of babies under three years of age who come to us,” says Douret.
Cultural venues such as the National Theater of Brittany and the Le Méliès cinemas in Saint-Étienne have launched “suspended tickets” or “solidarity tickets”. This is also the case of the Mogador Theater in Paris: with the caffè sospeso model, typical in the city of Naples, spectators can pay an additional ticket for a person who cannot afford it and the theater will redistribute those tickets among associations that they support, for example, “families with difficulties, single-parent families or refugee reception associations”.
Macron’s measures
If countries like Spain and Portugal have used the fiscal lever, reducing VAT on some food products, in France the president has opted for the budget path, mobilizing almost 100,000 million euros between 2021 and 2023, through initiatives such as the temporary blockade gas and electricity rates, or a reduction in gasoline pumps.
One of the most publicized has been the anti-inflation basket, piloted by the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire. In March an agreement was announced with the main distribution chains so that supermarkets would offer a selection of products at “attractive prices”. The initial idea, planned for a period of three months, was to create a unified basket of about fifty products for the whole country, although the agreed formula finally left supermarket chains free in the number and selection of products.
This first “anti-inflationary quarter” in supermarkets, described as a “success” by the minister, is going to last until September and the Ministry has also announced that they are studying ways to include school supplies in the initiative. The Ministry estimates that the initiative has achieved an average reduction of 13% ―for a shopping cart made up solely of the products that are the subject of these promotions―, but consumer organizations speak of price stabilization and not a decrease.
The basket at reduced prices is part of the annual negotiations between supermarkets and the industrial sector, in addition to focusing on the mechanisms with which prices are established. In France, distributors point to agri-food multinationals as responsible for inflation. “Some manufacturers rushed to pass on the rise [de los precios de los cereales o de la energía] but not so much the recent decline,” he said. Macron in an interview in TV. “Those declines have not always been passed on to the price consumers pay.”
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