The standoff has begun. The departments led by the right and the center announced, this Thursday, November 14, their intention to suspend from the first day of 2025 the payment of active solidarity income (RSA) and to stop supporting new unaccompanied minors (UMAs) if the government does not reverse the budgetary cuts planned for 2025. In the draft of the finance bill for 2025, for which Michel Barnier plans to use the 49.3, an effort of 5 billion euros is requested from communities. But this does not go over to the right, which therefore threatens to make savings on the most precarious.
“From January 1, all departments of the right and the center will suspend their payments” of RSA to family allowance funds and “we will no longer take care of new unaccompanied minors”, declared during a press point Nicolas Lacroix (LR), president of the group of 70 departments of the right, the center and the independents (DCI) within the association Departments of Franceat a conference in Angers. According to the association, the departments are the stratum of communities which will be most impacted by the planned budget cuts, with 44% of the effort, or 2.2 billion euros (out of 5), even though their economic situation is recognized as fragile.
“Until now, we have said nothing (…), but child protection is not migration policy. Today, unaccompanied minors, let the State manage and take care of them,” added Nicolas Lacroix. In November 2023, the Ain department, led by LR Jean Deguerry, had already announced that it would no longer take care of unaccompanied minors arriving directly on its territory, for budgetary reasons for at least three months. But the courts, seized by migrant aid associations, suspended the measure.
Mobilization of the 25 left-wing departments
Nicolas Lacroix also plans “to attack the State” in court every time he makes a decision “which impacts the finances of departments without their agreement” and asks the government to suspend the new revaluations planned under Ségur. Last June, a ministerial decree extended the “Ségur” bonus created during the Covid-19 pandemic to those “forgotten” in this salary negotiation, i.e. around 112,000 employees in the associative, health, social and medico-social sector. The total cost for the departments is estimated at 170 million euros for the year 2024 alone, the measure being retroactive to January 1. The Départements de France association called its members “not to implement this measure”.
In a separate press briefing, the presidents of the left-led departments held up colorful signs explaining the impact of the planned cuts on the lives of the French. “We are also considering mobilizations in our own departments,” declared Jean-Luc Gleyze, president of the group of left-wing departments, numbering 25 within the Departments of France, who plans to put a large tarpaulin on the building of the department of Gironde which he chairs, or to manifest. “If we are defending the departmental budget today, it is above all because we are defending the people we help on a daily basis,” he added, specifying that the budgetary effort had “already been done” for departments with a loss of 6 billion euros in transfer taxes in two years.
Explosion of social spending
“Will it be necessary to impact the elderly person and make them pay more than they have to pay in nursing homes? Should we reduce the number of social workers? Should we support sports clubs less? Should we protect children less? Should we increase the price of school canteens for middle school students? he asked.
The departments are facing an explosion in their social spending on child protection, assistance for dependent elderly people and people with disabilities, but at the same time are seeing their revenue from real estate transactions decline and are recording less than VAT as expected. The departments are therefore calling on the government to review its copy by abandoning the planned levy on operating revenues and freezing the VAT dynamic.
Source: www.liberation.fr
