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Minimum incomes and benefits, Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Automatic payment, single social allowance: Individualise entitlements and automate social benefits

Direction of change: creation of a scheme, compared with current law.

The lever. Payment of benefits without any application, based on declared income, and possible merger of several benefits into a single one. Direction rule: ↑ more automatic payment, more consolidated benefits.

« Garantir l’individualisation des droits et proposer l’automatisation des prestations sociales »1

Translation by the editorsGuarantee the individualisation of entitlements and propose the automation of social benefits

Encoding

Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The programme does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€2.9bn

per year for the public accounts, new spending, range −€3bn to −€2bn.

The calculation

  • 100% take-up of the RSA and the prime d'activité (automatic payment, IPP): Option costed by the source: a cost of €2.9bn (2 to 3) per year.

Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Reading adopted: automation (« proposer l'automatisation des prestations sociales » [“propose the automation of social benefits”]) raises take-up of the RSA and the in-work benefit (prime d'activité) to 100%, which is the upper bound of its effect. Only automation for the RSA and the in-work benefit is costed. The automation of other benefits and the individualisation of entitlements are not costed.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. « solidarité à la source » (solidarity at source) reform: pre-filling of RSA (minimum income) income declarations, piloted in autumn 2024, with nationwide roll-out planned for the first quarter of 2025. The « allocation sociale unique » (single social allowance) project is not in force.

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2018 euros

Limits. The IPP considers the €2.9bn figure uncertain (« approximation » [“approximation”]); the DREES measures 34% quarterly non-take-up of the RSA and 20% persistent non-take-up. Gap between sources: the IPP costs €2.9bn for the RSA and in-work benefit together, the DREES about €3bn for the RSA alone, on different fields and vintages. For the single social allowance, the cost depends entirely on its parameters: 0 if it is done at constant cost, with losers. The lower bound (2) is an assumption by the editors: partial elimination of non-take-up. A position that promises automatic payment of social benefits in general is linked to the option of 100% take-up of the RSA and in-work benefit, as a partial costing: other benefits are not costed. Benchmark not counted: the Institut Montaigne (2022) costs automatic payment of all benefits at €4.3bn to €7.9bn (6.1 as central value), but its range rests on an assumed non-take-up of 0 to 10% for housing benefits and family allowances, without source, it deducts €1.7bn of supposed fraud assumed to be entirely avoided, and it counts €6bn for the RSA and in-work benefit, double the IPP costing used here.

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Jean-Luc Mélenchon

  1. L’Avenir en commun (édition 2025), p. 30. Open the document at this page.

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