Paris (AFP)
Employees in the private sector facing financial "difficulties" because of the coronavirus will be able to ask their supplementary pension fund for "exceptional emergency aid" of up to 1,500 euros, Agirc-Arrco announced on Tuesday.
All employees who experience "financial difficulties due to the health crisis" may apply for this aid, the amount of which will be calculated "depending on the situation of the applicant," said Agirc-Arrco in a press release.
Alerted in March by the CPME on the fate of some 150,000 salaried managers (including 120,000 managers of small businesses with less than 10 employees), the institution decided to mobilize its social action fund - usually intended for retirees and unemployed - for the benefit of all its contributors, potentially 18.8 million working people.
"Any situation can be studied," declared the president of Agirc-Arrco, Jean-Claude Barboul, to AFP, defending a device "simple, fast, with a minimum of formalism".
The applicants will have to "fill in a simplified social intervention request form" and provide "a declaration on honor" specifying "the financial difficulties encountered", specifies the press release.
Once the file is validated, the pension fund ensures that the payment will be "made in a month at most".
The ticket office will remain open "until the end of July", without excluding a possible "extension" in case of crowds. Ditto for the budget, currently limited to "a global envelope of 200 million euros".
"We are bringing a stone to the building", underlined Mr. Barboul, evoking other aids already put in place by groups participating in the complementary retirement of the private sector, like the Ircem for the domestic workers, or Malakoff-Humanis for sales representatives.
© 2020 AFP