26-01-2025
French Parliament Targets Algerian Retirees Once Again
Coinciding with the diplomatic crisis with France and the far right's frenzied campaign against Algeria and its community members, the French National Assembly joined the bandwagon through the ongoing discussions on the new social security financing bill targeting Algerian retirees, who will likely face new complicated procedures to obtain their pensions.
In this context, an amendment bearing the number 'AS 90', submitted as part of the draft on financing social security, after the fall of the text of the previous finance law, following the overthrow of the government of Michel Barnier, submitted by the deputy Fabien Di Filippo, from the Republican right, stated that retirees outside the territory of the French Republic must appear in person every year before the French consular authorities or any natural or legal person accredited by the French diplomatic missions.
The amendment added that the process must follow the conditions stipulated in a decree issued by the Council of State, stressing that if this condition is not met, the pension will be immediately suspended.
In justifying the proposed amendment, the right-wing MP stated that according to the latest figures from the National Elderly Insurance Fund, around one million pensioners benefit from French pensions while living outside the country, more than half of them outside Europe.
He added that according to the Court of Auditors, the risk of fraud in old-age benefits concerns particularly pensions paid to people living abroad, due to 'the risk of concealing deaths or declaring them later', representing a financial amount of 9 billion euros.
The same MP claimed that as part of a special program launched by the government in 2022 in Algiers to verify the presence of retirees approaching the age of a century, nearly 30% of the 1,000 people over the age of 98 who were summoned did not show up, which led to the suspension of their pensions.
Under this amendment, thousands of Algerian retirees will have to travel hundreds of kilometres to the three French consulates in Algiers, Oran and Constantine to prove that they are alive, and thus continue to receive their retirement pensions, knowing that the vast majority of them are elderly and suffer from chronic diseases.
A similar amendment had been approved in the previous law, the text of which was dropped after the overthrow of Prime Minister Michel Barnier, but the French right returned this time trying to introduce this amendment to the Social Security Financing Law.
As is known, French consulates used to call some elderly retirees in particular, to verify if they are alive, especially those who are over 85 years old and still receiving their pension, while the rest are satisfied with sending a life certificate issued by the civil services in the municipality of residence at least once a year.
A previous report by the French National Assembly revealed that 405,351 Algerian retirees residing in the country receive pensions from various French funds, representing more than 100 million euros per month and 1.2 billion euros per year.
According to the same report, Algerians come first in terms of the nationalities of beneficiaries of French retirement pensions residing in their country of origin, followed by Portugal with about 174,000 retirees, Spain with 175,000, and Morocco with 65,000.
