Question 16564 — social security

Summary

Mr. Antoine Valentin draws the attention of the Minister of Action and Public Accounts to the relevance of maintaining, within the National Family Allowance Fund (CNAF), a so-called “communication and institutional relations” department, with regard, on the one hand, to the critical budgetary situation in which France finds itself and, on the other hand, to the strictly managerial mission that the social security code assigned to this organization. The state of national public finances shows an unprecedented deterioration since the post-war period. Public debt has crossed the threshold of 3,400 billion euros, or nearly 114% of gross domestic product, placing France among the most indebted states in the euro zone; at the same time, the public deficit, greater than 5.5% of GDP, is equivalent to more than 160 billion euros per year, while the annual debt burden now exceeds 55 billion euros, an amount greater than the budget devoted to national defense and close to that of school education. The result is that the requirement for sobriety, usefulness and rigor in the allocation of each public euro has never been so imperative, and more particularly with regard to organizations financed by national solidarity. It is in this context that the CNAF, with a consolidated budget of around 113 billion euros, the equivalent of the annual income tax, maintains a communications and institutional relations department whose scope, precise missions, staff and cost remain largely opaque to national representation. This department publishes and distributes in particular an institutional magazine addressed, at least in several exemplary, to each parliamentarian, as well as to a large network of institutions, administrations and opinion relays, without the justification, cost and volumes of this dissemination having ever been brought to the attention of Parliament. However, this practice calls for several observations of principle which reinforce each other. First of all, the CNAF is, under the terms of the social security code, a management operator: its mission consists of providing legal benefits to families and not of conducting a political or institutional communication policy vis-à-vis Parliament, which is by nature the responsibility of the Government and its central administrations. Then and inseparably, the distribution, using public funds, of a periodical promoting social benefits is similar, in its economics, to a form administrative self-promotion whose purpose with regard to the general interest seems all the more questionable as the beneficiaries already know their rights through other channels, website, online personal space, social workers and local services. Finally, and this is undoubtedly the most decisive, this expenditure is ultimately allocated to the product of social contributions and allocated taxes, that is to say on the resources that the legislator earmarks for the effective financing of family allowances and the support of families and not for the editorial production of a public operator. Consequently, the MP would first like to know the full annual cost: payroll, operating costs, external services, design, printing and delivery, of the communication and institutional relations department of the CNAF, its workforce in full-time equivalents, as well as the evolution of these expenses over the last five financial years. He then wishes, and in direct connection with this first point, to be informed on the circulation, the unit cost, the total annual cost and the list of recipients of the institutional magazine published by this department, in particular on the number of copies sent to each parliamentarian and on the legal basis of such diffusion. Beyond these factual elements, he asks it to kindly indicate whether such expenditure, financed in the final analysis by social contributions and the contribution of families, constitutes, in the budgetary context recalled, a useful and proportionate use of public money and more fundamentally, if public money is truly intended to promote social benefits to their beneficiaries rather than to provide these services themselves. Finally, he asks, as a logical extension of these questions, if the Government intends to remind social security organizations, particularly on the occasion of the next objectives and management agreement concluded with the CNAF, that institutional communication expenses cannot replace government action nor absorb resources which must be prioritized allocated to the services for which the funds are responsible.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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