Déchiffrer 2027

FREN

Wages and SMIC (minimum wage), Bruno Retailleau

In-work benefit (prime d'activité): Replaced by an incentive income, reduced by 30% of earnings in work

Direction of change: change of another kind, or uncertain direction, compared with current law.

The lever. Income supplement paid by the family allowance funds (caisses d'allocations familiales) to low-income workers: amount, eligible groups, method of calculation. Direction rule: ↑ higher in-work benefit or open to more households.

« Créer un Revenu d'incitation à l'activité en remplacement du RSA, de la prime d'activité et de l'allocation de solidarité spécifique. […] Dès la reprise d'un emploi, l'allocation devient un complément diminué de 30 % du salaire. »1

Translation by the editorsCreate a Revenu d'incitation à l'activité (activity incentive income) to replace the RSA, the prime d'activité and the specific solidarity allowance. […] As soon as a person returns to work, the allowance becomes a supplement reduced by 30% of the wage.

Encoding

No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

amount not broken down

Amount announced with no readable annual amount for this position alone: « Un gain annuel de 2 milliards d'euros » [“An annual gain of 2 billion euros”] (saving, for the activity incentive income as a whole)

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

not costed

In-work benefit, RSA and ASS merged into an activity incentive income whose rates the measure gives (€300 a month without activity, €550 with fifteen hours of training or job seeking, top-up of €550 reduced by 30% of earnings in work, zero above €1,833 of earned income, « sans lien avec la situation familiale » [“with no link to family situation”]). These rates, individual and with no household means test described (the Travail gagnant booklet opens it to « une personne adulte de moins de 65 ans, sans activité et sans revenu, en situation régulière » [“an adult under 65, without activity and without income, lawfully resident”]), would reach adults currently outside the RSA and the in-work benefit (partners with no income, part-time employees in well-off households): their cost requires a microsimulation on the Revenus fiscaux et sociaux survey, which no published source has carried out. The announced gain (€2bn) concerns the whole, with no published method.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Flat-rate amount of €638.28 for a single person since 1 April 2026 (+0.8%). Finance Act No. 2026-103 for 2026 and Decree No. 2026-222 of 30 March 2026 add an exceptional increase in the bonus (bonification), up to €54 per month, €50 on average. Spending: €10.41bn paid by the Caf (family allowance funds) in 2025 (10.3 in 2024), €10.7bn of actual spending in 2025 across all schemes (the Caf pay 97.2% of the total); the increase in the bonus costs €0.7bn in 2026 and €1.8bn in a full year (Senate, June 2026). 4.81 million recipient households at end-2024 (Drees, all schemes), 4.73 million in June 2026.

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2026 euros

Limits. Derived coefficient: 1% of spending in a full year under 2026 law, i.e. €10.7bn spent in 2025 plus €1.8bn of increase in the bonus in a full year (Senate, report no. 728, June 2026), about €12.5bn; not counting new entrants. A single source for this base: no range. The Caf spending in 2025 (€10.41bn, Cnaf, PA Conjoncture no. 36), divided by their share of recipients across all schemes (97.2% in 2025, PA Conjoncture no. 38), gives about €10.7bn, the value used (check of 18 October 2026). Benchmark: +€10 per month per household for 4.81 million households (Drees, end-2024), i.e. about €0.58bn per year (arithmetic). Amendment CF1058 costs +3% at €540m on an erroneous base (« 18 milliards » [“18 billion”] for action 11 and an average amount of €327): not used. Increase in the bonus voted in the finance act for 2026 (€50 on average): €0.7bn in 2026, €1.8bn in a full year (Senate, report no. 728, figure taken from the Cour des comptes annex); the OFCE expects about €1bn more in 2027. Scope gap between sources: €10.3bn (Caf, 2024), €10.6bn (Cour des comptes, all schemes) and €10.7bn (spending executed in 2025); the initial PLF 2026 forecast €9.3bn.

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 Bruno Retailleau

  1. Projet Retailleau, mesure n°26 « Permettre à ceux qui reprennent un emploi de gagner plus » (revenu d'incitation). Read the programme page.

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