They want a universal "basic income". Nineteen PS presidents of departments claim this Sunday the establishment of what they present as a pragmatic tool to fight against poverty in the context of the coronavirus epidemic.
"While the Covid-19 health crisis evolves every day a little more into a global economic crisis, pushing our solidarity systems to their limits, basic income appears (...) as a solution to cushion the social shock which risk to tip many of our fellow citizens into precariousness, "they write in a forum published by the Journal du Dimanche .
"By an amount equal to the poverty line"
The allowance they recommend would be "without compensation but with reinforced, automatic support to solve the problem of non-use of rights, open from 18 years to fight against the precariousness of the youngest, declining according to income from work and by an amount equal to the poverty line. "
"As the President of the Republic rightly said on March 12," they stress, "rupture decisions are necessary today. This solidarity solution will change the repository of human solidarity to give back to the French women and men confidence in a system created to provide them with both security of existence and the tools of their autonomy. "
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) compares the economic effects expected from the pandemic to those of the Great Depression of 1929. In France, where a quarter of private sector workers are already part-time unemployed, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire anticipates for the time being, a 6% drop in GDP in 2020.
The nineteen signatories of the tribune are Sophie Borderie (Lot-et-Garonne), Denis Bouad (Gard), Jean-Luc Chenut (Ille-et-Vilaine), Xavier Fortinon (Landes), Jean-Luc Gleyze (Gironde) , Philippe Grosvalet (Loire-Atlantique), Mathieu Klein (Meurthe-et-Moselle), Alain Lassus (Nièvre), Philippe Martin (Gers), René Massette (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), Georges Méric (Haute-Garonne) , Kléber Mesquida (Hérault), Henri Nayrou (Ariège), Germinal Peiro (Dordogne), Serge Rigal (Lot), Nathalie Sarrabezolles (Finistère), Stéphane Troussel (Seine-Saint-Denis), Laurent Ughetto (Ardèche) and André Viola ( Aude).