Transcript of the presentation by the President of the Republic of the National Strategy to Prevent Poverty

MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from French to English – Published on September 13, 2018

Topic : Nation, institutions, and reform of the State

There is no speech that can reach out to the force and truth with a lot of modesty you have distilled, because the daily basis that you have outlined at the moment, this is not one of a few left in our country

And behind these numbers, which we used very well, behind all the plans, all plans or all of the strategies which can very well be used to it, because they put at a distance the reality is that there is the scandal of poverty, that is to say of lives that are not selected, accidents that we have suffered, the battles that we have conducted, sometimes lost.

A scandal which, at bottom, we are too often accustomed to. I have seen since I traveled France faces a variety of what is called the poverty of this single mom who raises her two children and works part-time, this family with a single income is close to the Smic, of no fixed address, a former executive in a small company, that we meet for several years, this man, young who switches as a result of health problems and the loss of his job.

Of these lives, a bit like yours, as you have just said, by modesty, which are the lives of all of us. Being poor, as they say, it is first to fight on all fronts, and the victories seem to be a miracle. With poverty, comes lack of access to housing, quality food, and therefore to the health. With poverty come challenges in education, training, and thus access to the work, and thus have access to a decent income.

With poverty, comes the fear, the fear of not being able to give as much as you would like her children, the fear of being judged, the exhaustion in order to keep his dignity. Being poor, it is not a situation, it is a fight of every moment to try to survive. I was struck every time I heard people testify of their life, say exactly the opposite of what many of our fellow citizens, with a lot of sincerity, and think, and think that to be poor, to live with the RSA, it is a right that was given to the people, you have demonstrated the opposite, but every time I’ve heard people testify, they said : we, we don’t stop, with a lot of humour, some of them were telling me the same : it has an agenda of minister.

Because it is necessary to go to ask such a place was something else, it is necessary to take the child to the nursery, you must then go find… go to the meet in front of the judge because this or that, because these are days of terrible, to try to survive, and in fact, days that do not permit either rebuild, or to go to employment, or to resume its share in the company.

And thus loop the loop of doom social, the inevitable social fact that in France, it will take six generations for the descendants of a Frenchman from a poor family access to the middle class. This inevitable social fact that the poorest are always accommodated near the most poor, that when a family leaves a rough neighbourhood, another family poorer still replaces it, as a form of encirclement of reproduction in which one could not escape.

This, I learned it from you, because, too often, you take refuge behind the numbers, the reports, but to listen, to watch you work, all these months, to take the time with each other, I heard and understood it.

And sometimes, people ask me what it means to be French ? And to this, I answer without hesitation : to be French is to bear a universal ambition for our country, it is the desire strong, it is to seek to excel in every domain that embraces it, and beyond ourselves, and it is at the same time, refuse the situation to which we have come to accept it.

Being French, it is not to have no rest as long as what you have described exists, and what makes us French, it is this instinct of brotherhood which makes the freedom of the individual to choose his life, our common fight, because there would not be a side in the fight for freedom, and the other, the one for equality. These two fights his twin, because in fact, the scandal of the lives that you have described, it is a time not to be able to choose her life, and being trapped in a situation, a spiral, and for the rest of us, we get used to it.

And if I am here before you, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is to try and start, with you, a fight nine, essential, and vital for our country, deciding resolutely not to forget anyone

Our model, in spite of everything, if it corrects a little bit, if he can live more comfortably and better than in many other countries, does not sufficiently prevent poverty, does not enough to eradicate poverty. It is not to say this because I always hear the comments, this is a great turning point social, I believe in the unity of the policy which is being conducted by the government.

I think the bottom three projects that are indivisible, the production project, the creation of the activity, develop jobs, because if there are no jobs, there is no chance to solve the problem of poverty, because if there is no production, there is no chance of making the redistribution, or it comes at the expense of the few who produce and who will eventually leave, at the expense of future generations, who will have even less choice.

And so, at its heart, what we are talking about a production project that allows only the emancipation of the individual, and that you have perfectly demonstrated at the moment, there is an educational project on which we’ve been fighting for 15 months, which alone makes it possible for every child of the Republic build up its autonomy, and then, every adult to find his place in the accidents of life, and I will come back.

And there is a solidarist and humanist project that makes each and every one of us consider that part of our place in society is also a little to help the other, to help him find his place, to ward off this fate, to build the cohesion of a nation, to work for this civic resistance, and this place is there to say all the symbolism, without which a nation is not a nation.

Thinking more of prevention than treatment of consequences, going beyond a system too complex, which is based on the payment of multiple benefits, working to support each. Basically, what we have to do with poverty, extreme poverty, is the same ambition, the same determination as with all the other problems of society, and with the economic challenges that we have, to have the same pragmatism, the same commitment, the same ambition, but to consider that we have perhaps for too long decided to correct the consequences of which we ourselves cherish the causes, to leave a society which has become accustomed to the statutes , separations, assignments, and spend money trying to correct imperfections at the margin.

But to consider that these three projects are indissociable and that one can not succeed without the others, this fight, it is a fight of justice, of dignity, of responsibility, to forget nobody, it is to say in some so as some would say, to the first of rope: do not forget the last rope. And I really believe in this metaphor for those who love the mountains.

A leader of rope, he has a rope and is attached to others, and it is intentionally that I used this formula. There are always people to open a path, there are more swift people, there are people who are more likely, there are a lot of reasons. But we must! And pulling the rope so that it climbs less quickly will not help those who stay down, that's wrong. And that's what we've been doing, sometimes for years: let's get the rope out of the first one so he does not go galloping up the mountain, sometimes when he goes to see the pass and go behind, help those who stay at the bottom of the mountain.

But whoever goes up remembers that he has a rope, and this rope, what is it used for? To assure him, there is no one who is first of cordée if he remains of the society does not follow. Those who thought for a moment that we could succeed to a few in a society, on territories, they had to live at one time the protest of their own people, look on the other side of the Channel what said the Brexit, he simply says that part of the country said to himself: this project is no longer for me, I no longer have my place, these people do not want me, they forgot that There was a rope, they went to the other side of the mountain and left me alone.

This rope is the cohesion of a country, it's us, and so I'm expecting from each and everyone to succeed that, and this fight, what you've worked for, and why I want to thank you, it's not the business of a few, it's not the business of those who would stay on one side of the rope, nor is it a plan and strategy of the government alone or one minister, Minister … whatever your commitment, and thank you for that.

It is the mobilization of the whole nation that can alone succeed, you have, government, elected and all local authorities, associations, social workers, researchers, for months, with all those who have agreed to participate and who lived or live in poverty builds this project, and this is the commitment of the whole nation that I came to manifest, it is not a strategy tackled from above.

It is a mobilization of all, of all, of the nation, which alone can succeed. Above all else, to refuse the social fatality is to fight against this determinism which from childhood decides the life trajectories, destroys very early the talents, the ambitions, the dreams of a considerable part of our fellow citizens. This is the first fight of this mobilization for me, because when we are poor, it is because we have not chosen, when we are in poverty, it is the determinism of all determinisms, and I heard those who told their lives, and the absurdity of the system in which we live.

This young Ludivine, crossed a few days ago, explain that she had been placed as a child, and that each of her three children today were placed, because in a way, she had integrated herself that she was not able to be a mother because she had not had one, and that what we live as a solidarity, she lived as a confinement.

From the shame of that, and from the impossibility of doing, this determinism is there. Whatever the means we have, regardless of the commitment, the dedication of all those who have worked and already worked on what we wanted, and this is for me the first of the scandals and the worst of them.

In "Terre des hommes", there is this beautiful passage, and we mentioned it the other day with some, Saint-Exupéry says that, looking at a poor child, and already marked by the scars of social misery he exclaimed: it is Mozart who is assassinated! And this sentence says everything to me about how we must look at the child. There is in every child, starting with the child who is born into a poor family, a Mozart who is murdered, because, in fact, we collectively decide that he has no chance to become Mozart.

In fact, we collectively decide that there is no chance of him being a great conductor, a great surgeon, a senior official, or whatever; tacitly, surreptitiously, it is unbearable of injustice and waste. Poverty must no longer be transmitted as a legacy, but today this social reproduction of inequalities is a reality, the one I mentioned earlier, and what does it say? She says that it takes 180 years for a child born poor to hope that the descendants of his descendants will reach the middle classes.

And so our society, which has many assets, but has become a society of statutes no longer allows this mobility, so it is from early childhood that we must intervene. We will not deal with poverty if we do not understand that it strikes at an early age, that its consequences immediately affect the life course of those who are struck.

And in this week devoted to the fight against illiteracy, I want to remind here that a 4-year-old child, when he is born into a disadvantaged family, already has half the words of a child from a family. upper class. There has been a lot of progress in recent years in research that has shown that the heart of inequality is structured in the first years of life, the heart.

And so for me the heart of the fight, it is in this policy of prevention, it is already too late when one says oneself: it is necessary to help massively the one who at 25, 30 years or 40 years had an accident of the life I will come back to it a moment ago, it is indispensable, in philosophy besides which you have perfectly described with your words and your example. But the first battle is to prevent the child from falling there and to do everything so that he does not fall.

It is this philosophy that has led us to split classes of CP, CE1 in schools of the poorest neighborhoods, it is the very heart of this policy of fight against poverty, the heart itself, it is to allow 6 and 7 year olds who have all these differences in language, learning to be in a situation where the teacher will be able to take more time with them, catch up, correct, and avoid having one in five children in CM2 who does not know well or read or write or count or behave, but this one in five children, it is always this statistic which is distant, but which does not say that it is 60 or 70% in the districts where poverty is concentrated.

This first reform begins to see its results, and we will continue, and by stain of oil, we will expand as soon as we can go beyond these areas of priority education. That's what led me to announce, a few months ago, and that will be a reality, from the next school year, to make education mandatory from 3 years, and to help expand kindergarten some said: but this is the case for almost all the children of France, it is not true.

First of all, as it is not compulsory, they are often only put in the morning, and in the afternoon, when the mother, or both parents do not work, they are taken back, and so, these are not that a few hours, but the few% in our society, the tens of thousands of children who did not go to kindergarten from 3 years, they came, with few exceptions, the most rich, but from the heart of poverty.

Those, if we want to give them back their chance, it is necessary from the age of 3 to put them in kindergarten, to allow precisely, not only this socialization, but the learning, the follow-up, the rudiments of the language, the calculation, and everything that goes with it. But I'm aware that we have to go further, I read to you, dear Boris CYRULNIK, and I read a few of your colleagues, and that is the commitment we made with the minister, with the ministers.

Because the battle we need to lead today is that of an in-depth reform of childcare, childcare from 0 to 3 years is the moment, this essential place of learning the life, of this cognitive awakening, of what will allow the child to have more chances, the teenager, to better orient himself, and the adult to get out of it, and to thwart this inevitability which I mentioned earlier; the places of care must become these places accessible to all, whatever his income or his address, or the language, the development, the empathy, the self-confidence are built, with lasting effects on all the life.

Let's look at the examples offered by some Nordic and Scandinavian countries in this area, Finland, for example, where I was a few weeks ago is an extraordinary example in this respect, it has invested heavily in early childhood, but we warn of doing so by this investment unacceptable injustices, but then a cost to our society, which will be social, which will sometimes be medical, and people we break for life, because we have not been able to accompany them in the first hours and first months.

The quality of child care needs to be massively improved, and the implementation on the ground of this major reform will have to be precisely assessed throughout. The 600,000 early childhood professionals will be even better accompanied, their training will be completed, sometimes reviewed, in this sense, from 2019, so that language learning, empathy of self-confidence now irrigate all modes of This is already the case in some nurseries in Grenoble, Lille and Le Havre, where programs focusing on language learning and self-confidence have been deployed.

And I welcome the commitment of the CCAS, educators and many researchers. We will continue this logic of innovative experiments, thanks to a social innovation fund of 100 million euros, which will allow, in addition to the widespread training of early childhood professionals, the redesign of CAP Early childhood, and the diploma of educator of young children, to spread throughout the territory of new methods of learning in the places of guard.

It is both an investment to create, to help develop more, but also to do better, to train educators and trainers, because it can not be improvised, and not just to train to technical skills, but also cognitive, behavioral skills, which are essential. This is a social investment and it is this social investment from which we have to leave, and it is the whole system that we need, from there, to rethink, concentrating efforts where the needs are the most urgent.

This is also the reason why childcare must be accessible to all and all over the country, whereas today, only 5% of children in disadvantaged neighborhoods are kept in nursery, compared to 22% of children of easy class. This is the reality of the country today. And this reality is due to what? As you describe, Mr President, to territorial inequalities, the fact that a municipality which concentrates poverty often has much less of a means to open custody solutions on its territory.

But it is also linked to the fact that people living in this situation are much less likely to go to nursery than others, because they have not been explained to them necessarily, because they are afraid, afraid of being judged fear that their child will be taken away too, if they put him in the manger. And that too, we have to collectively work on it, demystify it, break those invisible boundaries that build these assignments and injustices, and it's not just top-down measures, money or ads, it's a day-to-day job – and I've seen it done remarkably in the field – that educators come out of the crèche to go into the building across the street and explain to families what it's like to come bring their child.

To reassure them, to build this confidence without which there will be no possible solution. And this is also what we must encourage, support and value. We will therefore help the poorest communes to build these nurseries, limiting what they must pay to 10% of the cost of building these structures so that the inhabitants of these municipalities have as many opportunities as others to have their children guarded. children. Mothers or fathers who raise their children alone are hit even harder, more than a third of these lone parents are in poverty, so we must help them even more, we will spend 40 to 300 crèches professional integration by 2020, because it is these kindergartens which, in particular, make it possible to have your child look after you during a training, a search for a job, and to allow the path that you have perfectly described at the moment, Mrs.

The childminders, will be from 2019, paid immediately, without advance costs, because to think that help by asking to start to spend is to put an additional barrier that is often impassable for those and those who live in these situations. And a new path for parents will be put in place from the fourth month of pregnancy.

PMI will be at the heart of the implementation of this reform, and will be deeply transformed to better address the problems faced by single-parent families, including by developing support for procedures, parental respite offers that allow parents to recover, and ultimately, to better manage daily life with children.

And it is necessary, from the fourth month, to explain to the mothers, to the future mothers, to those who share their life, what will be having a child, to explain the fundamental rules of a good food, which we know today, here too, perfectly, that if it is not well assured in the first months, the chances of a normal development, and thus of a success then school, educative and throughout the life, are not the same . And so this transformation of the PMI is the one we are going to do, it is that of the accompaniment of the mother, because you said it very nicely, no one is born mother or father, one learn, it takes a lot of humility to say what you said, ma'am, and a lot of wisdom.

But we also need to draw all the consequences and consider that we may not have sufficiently accompanied the future mothers early enough to allow them and their children to have the same opportunities to succeed. . Preventing poverty is also better protecting and guaranteeing the fundamental rights of children, these fundamental rights, they are indivisible, inalienable, it is education, of course, and I talked about it, but also health, housing, food, our approach to childhood must be unquestionably global.

How can one think that children who sometimes live in overcrowded housing, have uncorrected vision problems, can not have lunch, because the canteen costs too much, can get by as well as the others. And what you have very well described for adults at work is even better for children. In line with the Housing First plan, announced several months ago, we will continue, our slum clearance policy, which is populated by 30% of children, and as soon as the so-called Elan law is promulgated. we will continue to renovate substandard housing as part of the "Condominium Initiative" plan, we will finally continue to fight against the sleep merchants, and we will give priority, with the ANRU, accelerating the procedures, which made it possible to make the recent reform, and I thank you, President, for speeding up the renovation programs, especially in the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

In addition to this, we will develop and adapt from January 1, 2019 family accommodation solutions to 7,500 places over the five-year period to build a system that will both accommodate and support families in the education of their children, and to accompany them in sustainable housing.

Besides housing, food is a fundamental right of children, who too often have to be guaranteed too. So I want to allow all children to have a balanced lunch in the right conditions, access to the canteen will be made more universal, by developing meals to one euro for the poorest people, many mayors have already taken strong initiatives in this area, which I welcome, in municipalities, neighborhoods and city policies in particular. But I hope that all over the country, poor children can benefit from the same assets, and that we can further support the municipalities in this fair fight.

Also, a financial incentive will be put in place for the poorest municipalities, and have not developed social pricing in canteens, so that they also allow their children to access a lunch. Breakfasts will also be offered in the colleges of REP, to ensure that all students start the day in good conditions. It seems details, it seems ancillary to some or ridiculous that's all but that, life is made of details, and moreover, we see the difference to these details, and gradually, the slip is installed because of these details. We can no longer tolerate that the dignity of children is not guaranteed, and beyond the actions that I mentioned, I will launch next November a strategy dedicated to child abuse, which already mobilizes the Minister of Solidarity and Health, the Minister of Justice and many ministers.

Our childhood so, but the fight does not stop there, I will also be attentive to the situation of young people who are not spared by poverty, 20% of young people are poor, start in life with difficulties that sometimes become irrattrapable , because 60,000 young people each year find themselves out of all radars, neither in school, nor in employment, and gradually become lost sight of each year, the equivalent of roughly Chambéry, at In total, nearly two million young people are in our country in this situation more or less.

That's why I decided that a training obligation up to 18 years old would be put in place. The objective is clear: no young person under 18 will be able to find a solution and must be either educated, in training or in employment; this training obligation, which will come into effect at the start of the school year 2020, will result, first of all by a massive identification of these young people, the follow-up by the National Education of those who are called school dropouts, which is today at best twice a year, will now be continuous.

A systematic contact with these young people by local missions that will convene the young people concerned, and an obligation for local missions to offer young people a solution that we will accompany. This means a profound transformation in the way of organizing National Education and higher education, not to consider, as sometimes we still do it in a contemporary way in our collective debates, that we should just look at the number graduates who have found their registration at the university. The drama of these statistics, it is not that, it is those who relieve you these statistics, it is those who release the rope, for the blow, very slowly, and which leave the statistics because they do not ask any more nothing.

And that's why, with the ministers, we also want to continue to improve this famous Parcoursup device, which has already made a lot of improvements, is fairer, more transparent and we will not stop improving to allow identify those who give up, those who come out of everything, and follow them through this.

For this obligation to be credible, solutions for young people will be massively developed within the framework of this strategy, with the increase in schooling proposals, in the framework of second chance schools, the development of training under the plan. investment in skills, learning solutions, which the Minister has strongly promised, and we already see that the commitment of the government, local authorities, the entire nation in this area, gives its first effects, at the start of this school year, young people who have graduated from grade 3 are much more enrolled in apprenticeship programs, plus 40%.

Which shows that there is something that is happening with this development, and therefore we develop learning solutions by investing heavily, simplifying the rules. And in the context of these solutions, an extension of the Youth Guarantee – proven device for the benefit of 500,000 new young people – will be funded. We now have 100,000, this means that we will generalize the Youth Guarantee

These different routes show the variety that must be offered to the youngest for there to be a solution, so that the young between 16 and 18 years old does not remain without option if he leaves school or training . And so it's not just this investment, this information we need to do, but the right direction we need to ensure. And I must say that in this matter, and this is not the fault of anyone, and I do not stigmatize anyone, because all those who do the orientation have an immense merit, but, it must be to say, we have collectively, by our representations, by our habits, built a real drama of the orientation in France, to ask a young of the districts in which it has the least confidence, it is true that often, the policies, the unions , the journalists, to put a lot of people at ease in this room, arrive rather high in the classification, the adviser of orientation also arrives very high in an unfair way.

Why ? Because he is the one who says at some point in the young person's life: that's not for you, and sometimes it's not true that it's not for him, sometimes it's not true, I was struck in the exchanges I had, to meet people of extraordinary strength to explain to me at the age of 50 that their life was broken because explained to them when they were 16 years old, and they wanted to be nurses or caregivers, that they were going to do accounting, probably because it was fashionable and that we had to guide people who had pretty much his profile in accounting.

And with a lot of good sense, she told me: but I never knew how to count, because she came from a poor family, for the same reasons that we know, she told me says: I was directed to accounting, and she went to accounting, because she did what she had always chosen for her in life. And it was not in accounting, and she spent her life at RSA, but this same story, we find it.

And besides, according to the generations, one sees the obsessions for the accounting or the secretariat or what do I know. There were modes in our orientations. And as true as it is crazy that a child coming from a well-off family or executives never goes to apprenticeship, because when he is not good in the academic fields, he can succeed in sectors that allows learning, it is crazy and unfair that children from poor families are not entitled to an equivalent orientation to others.

And so, on this subject, we will also invest massively, first, by deconstructing collective representations, as I am doing, by valuing a lot more certain sectors, but also by investing in the formation of those and those who are in charge of guidance, and putting the orientation at the heart of the school, as we decided to do, from the end of college, it is an essential project, it is not incidental , by allowing all sectors to come to school, to explain, by massively developing internships in companies, especially in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

It is also by securing the entry into life of the most vulnerable young people, such as those of child protection, that we will be able to better prevent poverty. I know on this subject the remarkable commitment of the departments, and in a concerted way, with these, we will create the obligation, with the social assistance to the childhood, to find a solution of housing, training, employment to the young people for whom she is responsible, if need be, she will have to take care of the young people concerned until they turn 21, and not until they turn 18.

The government will contract financially with the departments so that they better prepare the exit of these young people and can be helped to do so. 50 million euros will be mobilized for this purpose, so that the departments continue to accompany the 3,000 young people in their charge and who have no solution, by helping them to find a training, by accompanying them to the mission by helping them find a sustainable housing solution, by leading them to the devices I just mentioned.

It seems to be a very small part of the problem, but it's always on this very small part of the problem that we have to redouble our efforts, and I thank you for the spirit and the cooperation that has been leads. And I asked the government that this contract is commensurate with your commitment and the right means to accompany you.

I could say so many more about this indispensable first pillar of prevention, that is to say the one that speaks of our children, our young people, it is essential, and it is for me the first fight. But there is a second pillar, which I also want to be able to talk to you this morning, because if we want poverty to be no longer a dead end, we must also allow everyone to find their way back to work, activity, to seize a new chance to fully regain their dignity in society and nation.

Because work provides a salary, an income, of course, because it opens the door to a denser, richer social life, because it gives pride, a place in society and enables emancipation and social mobility. The heart of the policy that I want to see leads is to ensure that everyone can regain their dignity in our nation by finding its role, its place, its share of activity. And everyone does not have its share of activity by going necessarily to a contract of indefinite duration, in a sector of activity, everybody can not do it, is not made for that, it does not want to say that those who do not have this opportunity do not have the right to have their place in society, and they do not ask the assistantship, you have it, with a lot of strength, says: they ask help them build this place, and the whole society needs it.

But my deep conviction is that it does not go through, again, monetary subjects, cold devices, the consideration that, in a way, if I told you that we doubled the RSA, we would have solved the problem , nothing of that. There are topics, I will come back, I assure you, worthy income, amounts, but there is especially a place to find, the opportunity for everyone to take a role in society, this opportunity to participate to the construction of the common good.

What you said, sir, is exactly that, you talked about activity, but you talked about the common good, you talked about the implicit contract that exists between each individual and the nation, this implicit contract. is that the nation, and it is in our Constitution, owes it its fundamental rights, and it is that this individual owes something to the nation, which is this participation to the common good, did you decide to make, there are 1,000 ways, we must not explain that there is only one. And that's what I want us to achieve.

When the minimum integration income was set up by Michel ROCARD, inspired by Father Wresinski and several others, he had two objectives: to fight against poverty and to enable integration. The economic crisis and mass unemployment hit our country hard, and we have forgotten a little, or we have relaxed the effort on integration. But in doing so, forgetting to accompany all people to employment, forgetting all too often to show them the way to the exit from poverty, we also collectively harvested what we sowed, a collective inability to allow the return to work of people who have fallen into poverty; a feeling too widely shared that a life without a job, without activity is a fatality, from which it becomes almost impossible to go out.

And we fed the mistrust of those who fall into poverty of a possibility of a return to normal life, and we fed the mistrust of the rest of society who, too often, was pleased to say : basically, they chose it, they are good there, we help them too much, look, since they stay there! And this double distrust is a poison, a poison for our terrible national cohesion, and the figures, in this respect, are, again, cruel, only 9% of recipients of the RSA find a job in the year, 40% are at RSA for five years.

And even though in ten years, RSA expenses have increased by 80%, integration expenses have halved; it was believed that providing monetary support to people who had fallen into poverty was enough. But we forgot that the most important thing for people living in poverty was to get out of it. Basically, I do not want a plan to be made so that poor people live better off in poverty. I want them to be given the choice and the opportunity, because they want to, not to be, to feel that they are becoming dependent on a system of help.

Now this feeling of dependence, there exists, and with him, the humiliation that accompanies it, the fear of the look, the shame, the shame of being considered as an incapable person, the shame of asking, and that is all this , what I describe, point by point, which has helped to dehumanize, at the same time, the poor, in our society, we dare not even say the name, it shocks, we say people living in poverty because, in the end, it puts more distance, but almost ends up dehumanizing the fight against poverty, reducing it to subjects of amounts, devices, but it is terrible, because it is those and those who testify and who say it is what scares them the most, these devices are unintelligible, and each time we end up collectively by putting acronyms on them, that's the worst thing.

Over the last few weeks, I have met a formidable, formidable social worker who had done successive trainings, and who explained to me what I myself have experienced in recent months, and learned, is that we learn poor people, and it is they who have the answer, what I tell you, that's what they told us, that's what they made me understand, me I did not understand it 15 months ago what I'm telling you. And he told me: when I was a social worker at the beginning, there was a very well-tried technique, when we were at the end of the day and the last appointment was painful, we explain all the devices, as he There are many of them, it is incomprehensible, and really, when the watch was spinning, they were only mentioned by the acronyms, and there, inevitably, the person in front of us began to sweat, we saw lost, and then, she was asked if she had a question, she did not have one. What he said, who devoted his life to it, was humor, but a humor that says what we collectively did.

An overly complex system that has become impersonal, dehumanized and no longer meets the heart of the goal that must be ours. So great initiatives, but finally recent, still insufficiently deployed, are there, and say the opposite, "Territories zero long-term unemployed", which allowed to reconnect with the spirit of 1988, putting the insertion, support for employment at the heart of our social minima system.

And this is also the reason why we will support the devices like "Territories long-term unemployed", "Convergences", TAPAJ, which are built in this logic of the insertion of any person, including the people very far from employment, and who, at the heart of this process, have put time, support, the end of all barriers, who have not taken refuge behind devices that have become unintelligible but have built a social action humble and determined to sew, give this place to everyone.

This is why we will more than double the number of people who will benefit from these experiments in all territories and begin to implement this device beyond the existing experimental territories. It is also for that reason that I wish that together we lead two profound transformations of our collective action and our strategy, the first one is that of setting up, creating a real public service of insertion.

You said, Mr President, exactly what I think, for too many years, on this subject, we took refuge in a concert of Chicayas, as it was difficult, and that it was necessary that this policy is transferred At the closest to the field, the government said: we are going to transfer it to the departments, it is the right level, which is true, it is a relevant level, and therefore this competence has been transferred to the departments, the money did not follow, and with that, the inequalities between the territories, and we basically reduced this debate to a subject of skills and money.

It would be unfair to those departments and people if I reduced it to that. I am the guarantor of these rights, it is the State, the guarantor of these rights, by definition, by the Constitution. And the state can not discard to the department to say: well, they can not manage, it's a little more difficult, it's not possible. And so we must together, the departments, but beyond the departments, municipalities, cities, metropolises regions that want it, and the government, find the smartest solution that allows to create this public service of the insertion, that is to say, to build the universality of which the State must be the guarantor, but whose action must be deployed everywhere on the territory with all these engaged actors that you are.

Some departments today are remarkably accompanying RSA beneficiaries to employment, because they can, because they have fewer or because they are more motivated than others. But I can not accept from where I am that, in one department, there may be 90% of RSA beneficiaries who are accompanied, and in another, 40, that is not possible, I would not fulfill my mission. And from there arise, not only, social disparities, but of course territorial, which increase the geographical gap, this difference of destiny according to the place where one lives, that is the conception of the Republic of nobody, here.

To fight against poverty is at the heart of the republican pact, it must unite universality, responsibility and efficiency. This is why I want the State to reinvest on this issue of solidarity and access to employment for those who are furthest away, it is a question of justice as efficiency. The state must therefore be the guarantor on all territories of the same ambition, the same requirement, the same efficiency to accompany. Put everyone back on the path to employment.

Why, moreover, would the state be a stakeholder for job seekers, via Pôle emploi, and would it not be for the most remote public? Where is the consistency ? It is almost an aberration, where is the efficiency when we work too often in a compartmentalized way, limiting the bridges with the stigmatizing devices for our fellow citizens, the devices for the disabled, on the one hand, those for the recipients of the RSA on the other, those for the unemployed?

It is a whole this policy of insertion and support, we must build what is a true public service, in the true sense of the term, which does not belong to the government and which is not the responsibility that the government, but will be a single window for all those who want to find a place through work and activity in society. And this one-stop-shop, as we often say, must fully involve the departments, the communes, the regions, the government, with a good governance system that we need to invent, but first of all thinking of the person who is in this situation.

And we will work to build bridges between those policies that are good and more effective, and we will work to de-stigmatize them. When the person who is at RSA does not ask for it, it is because he is ashamed to go ask for it, it is also because the place where we are going to ask for it is not the same as where we will move for unemployment. These are very different tasks for the professionals who accompany, but we know that there are people who will not be able to find a place through work, but who may have a little activity, can be accompanied, and they need more time, and there are others who are very far from employment, but by spending time, for two or three years, or for longer, we can give back a place in the activity.

And there are others who are at least social, long-term unemployed, they need training, investing in their skills, which is at the heart of the government agenda, and others who simply need to be offered a job offer that matches their skills.

Each time, it is to allow a person to find an activity. It must be possible to do so in a place that will ensure a continuum, at the heart of this public service of insertion, employment, activity, but by acting as the accompaniment, the share of care that must put, is each time different depending on the vulnerability of each and the situation in which it is, but I am deeply convinced that we must stop putting everyone in a box, each box, each line. Why ? It is deeply unfair.

And so this public service, that we will create together, this public service of integration is for me the key, the only way to guarantee the universality of its rights, and to allow to be more effective, in concrete , in the field. The State will come back, along with the departments, metropolises, municipalities, associations that make the daily, by a remarkable work that I want to welcome here, for this general mobilization in favor of people furthest from employment, and to build this public service of insertion. This reinvestment of the State will be with all local authorities and all associations.

The state will be responsible, set the ambition, will guarantee the universality, and therefore also the clarity of funding, and its totality, but it will rely on departments, cities, social actors, to put implemented.

We need to collectively build this new public service of integration, which will mobilize all actors of insertion, today too fragmented, as I have just described, around a single, shared governance, between us to support the beneficiaries of the social minima with a new efficiency, towards a systematic integration path.

This is the project, that's what I want us to do, going beyond, in the process, the quarrels I've seen too much, and that are not up to the challenge of ours, and not up to the challenge. commitment I know held by all elected officials who face this reality and fight on the ground.

I asked the government to work on it now, in connection with communities, associations, economic and social actors, and to propose an organization, shared, for the first quarter of 2019, it will find its place in a law that will be passed in 2020.

In terms of solidarity, support of the most fragile to integration, work, dignity, the state must resume its place. However, we can not continue this way while waiting for the implementation of this change of scale, we can not continue with only one beneficiary of RSA out of two who is accompanied today and followed regularly. We must, as of now, translate this general mobilization in favor of integration, which is why I asked the government to commit from 1 January 2019 a new contractualization with the departments, on the basis of the proposals made by Mathieu KLEIN and Claire PITOLLAT in their report, that is to say by financially assisting the departments that will fully register in a process of integration, but also by financially sanctioning departments that have not invested in this policy.

This contractualization, we will have to discuss the terms, it will concern of course the financing of the individual allocations of solidarity, but it will be demanding and will have to translate the main objectives which will be those of the future public service of the insertion. I hope that this new contractualization is designed, as it were, as a prefiguration of the public service of integration. Each RSA beneficiary must be offered an appointment within one month of enrolling in the RSA to be immediately accompanied. Each beneficiary must sign a reciprocal commitment contract within one month. Each beneficiary must be able to go to a single place, where the different actors will be present, in order to answer all his questions.

Accompaniment must cease to be a mechanical, bureaucratic, disembodied system, too disconnected from the reality of everyday life, and I deeply believe that this approach, from January 1st, with the funding that will accompany it, will allow us to first step towards this profound transformation.

Basically, what I believe in, and I know it's your deep conviction, you who work every day, and are committed, is also to rehumanize the accompaniment, to make it more individual, more effective, less thought in an industrial logic, giving more time, so to speak, to do it. We must, as such, extend the renovation of social work already undertaken, succeed in transforming the practices so that they allow, better than today, people to get by.

And there is another continent, I am aware of being already long today, but the subject is too important to evade, but there is also another continent before us, that of the recognition of all these professions of accompaniment, help, care. We left them as a hidden, unproductive part of society, it's a huge mistake, they make, they produce, they help produce, they give a place, and all those social workers, those who accompany, care, help, we must both recognize them as the heart of this third republican project that I mentioned earlier, but also reinvest in training, and as such I also wish, in the coming months, that we can recognize more innovative training in the subject, fully recognize these workers, their place and the most innovative practices.

Faced with this return of support in our social policy, the State will also mobilize significant resources to develop business solutions, and thus provide new solutions to all those who will make live this public service of the insertion. We will thus deploy, over the five-year period, several strong policies in this area. For insertion by economic activity we will bring to 240,000 the number of contracts, there are today 140,000. For individualized support, we will invest 500 million euros. To generalize the Youth Guarantee, it will be more than 350 million euros invested. And of course, the investments will follow to be worthy of the expansion of the experiments mentioned earlier, in particular Territories zero unemployed and all the others.

I'm talking about it on purpose, investment. Investments, because they are always solutions that we bring, time of accompaniment on the ground, but to allow a person to find then a durable employment, or perhaps, for some, to be for some people with disabilities, for some people that the bite of life no longer allow to be integrated in a company, because they are just different, but that they are very happy in a suitable company, well we will invest, we will invest, at the height of the amounts that I just mentioned, in the spirit that I just mentioned. This support I want it to meet these requirements everywhere in the territories, that I evoked, and that all the communities present here carry.

The second major project, which I wish to launch today, and which is for me a second profound transformation of the policy that we must have in this area, is that which must lead us to review in depth, renovate our system social minima.

The new model, which we draw, must go to the end of this logic of universality, and to the public service of the insertion must correspond a system of minima social renovated. Today, the maquis of existing services does not make it possible to escape poverty, even though the recipients of social assistance, because of the urgency, distress, and often some form of dropping out, need 'a clear, simple, fast support, we engineer ourselves, collectively, it is the fault of nobody, it is us all, to confront them with an administrative sophistication which can confine to the bureaucratic nightmare. That's why, governance matters, we must always settle them between us, behind, but there must always be, before, a benevolent face and a united welcome, and a solution brought, and a person to tend the hand. They are people and faces, the rest is the complexity that we have to deal with.

Well, this complicity of the minima, helpers, is exactly the twin of the complexity of the devices that I evoked just now. Its consequence is well known, 30% of people who should benefit from the RSA do not have access, almost a third, because they do not know, because they do not dare, because they are so far when they needed it so much that they decided it was not even for them anymore. And it is this maquis also of social minima, which is not compatible with a system based on the accompaniment and the recovery of activity, and the exit of the poverty, the heart of the philosophy that I carry it is that of activity, of returning to the place in society, and because there is this maquis, we are no longer able to do so. Because all too often the piling up of aids, for various purposes, from the RSA, the activity premium, through the APL, all the aids we know, with complex formulas, ends up generating errors, confusion, and finally, that we do not know very well if we win, and how much, to return to work, and we end up in absurd situations, even shocking, where it can be financially preferable not to return to work, or not to increase the working time, because to resume the full activity would result, at best a maintenance of the income, at the worst a loss.

This fight is not new, dear Martin, and on several occasions we have tried to lead it in our country, and it also feeds disillusionment, discouragement, and social division, it nourishes this unbearable discourse on assistantship he feeds the daily food cases that say "he did not take back this SMIC, he refused this job, he had more interest in staying with all the help given to him." It is unacceptable that some who can resume a job do not do so, also, to the right to the accompaniment, must correspond a duty, and there must also be a sanction if that is not the case. Today 1% of the beneficiaries of the RSA are effectively sanctioned for not having respected their commitments. And both are twins, the investment, the fight for the accompaniment, the guarantee of the rights, unconditionally by the State, must have in front of her the duty of each one, which is the part of dignity that we recognize each citizen. There is no citizen without duty in the Republic, there is a framework of this duty, and there is an appreciation, we must not ask people to do what they can not, but we must ask them to do their part, and they have to do it, and it's their dignity to do it, and it's their deep desire to do it, and helping them do that is the best integration policy.

This maquis, which I describe, opaque, profoundly erodes confidence in the system and feeds at once opacity and mistrust, it is the haunting discourse on the profiteers, the assistants, which gnaws the country, instils venom. Julien DAMON and Christine CLOAREC have well illustrated these topics by speaking of "just benefits. We can not be satisfied here too.

So, for 15 months things have already been decided, in accordance with the commitments I made to the French to allow to live more dignely, to live better for some, the exceptional rise of the disabled adult allowance, which will reach 900 euros on November 1, 2019, after an increase of 40 euros, on November 1, 2018, and an increase of 40 euros so coming next year, the rise also the minimum old age, with 30 euros already entered into force in April last, 35 in 2019, 35 in 2020, an increase of 100 euros at the end of the five-year period, the energy checks, the water-check, the activity premium for the most modest workers. But all of this is something that I am saying, which the government has announced, that parliamentarians have brought, but which is improving our existing system, to consider that, on these incomes of absolute solidarity, it is necessary to appointments and make the benefit more fair, allow to live with dignity, but it does not solve the heart of the problem that I evoked at the moment. We need to go further and change scale.

That is why I hope that we will create, here again, by a law in 2020, on the basis of a collective work, a universal income of activity, which merges the greatest possible number of benefits, and of which the State will be fully responsible. We have to take the time to analyze, consult, sometimes mistakes were made on these beautiful ideas, I look on the other side of the Channel, the merger of many benefits led to reduce the rights of some and, fundamentally, to create new problems, and we have to analyze very directly, very methodically, what made others fail, sometimes what made us fail when we wanted to do that. But, by taking this time, involving all stakeholders, associating those who have lived in poverty, or live poor, I hope that we can build this universal income of activity.

I'm asking you a favor, do not call it RUA, I'm going to tell you why, because when you get a salary, you do not have an acronym to say what you're touching, you get an income, so people will earn income, and because acronyms lock people in boxes. RMI has become something more ambivalent when it becomes an acronym, because people say "I'm getting RMI", or "RSA" today, we're earning income. I want everyone in our society to earn an income, if he takes his share of obligations, and I will come back to it, but an income, but every word has a meaning, universal income of activity. An income first because it is a question of allowing everyone to live decently. We will ensure that those who do not have resources are adequately protected, and all the work that needs to be done in the coming months is to know what exactly is this part of a decent income.

Universal then, because it is a question of guaranteeing to everyone that he will dispose, as soon as his income falls below a certain threshold, of a safety net of the State, which is at the same time simple, fair and transparent. It will be simple, there will be no need to navigate the allowances by wasting time, energy, and sometimes its meager resources, to collect fees, it will be fair and transparent, because the parameters will be the same for all, perfectly intelligible, when today they diverge according to the esoteric formulas. And by merging the largest number of social benefits, from RSA to LPAs, we will finally be able to guarantee a minimum level of dignity for all those who must benefit from it, by finally providing a response to the extent of the non-use of rights. The problem of poverty has never been solved by ensuring that people do not have recourse to an income, it has never been settled.

And then Activity, finally, because it is a question of allowing the return to employment, to the activity. I never believed in the universal income that was unconditional, and believed that it could give a few hundred euros as the balance of any account to fight mass unemployment and modern precariousness, because it installs in a situation apart from society, because it installs in a place where, deep down, nobody is good, and can not live well. I never believed it because it implicitly, philosophically, to be satisfied to relegate, for life, people in a poverty that was simply softened.

I do not want to buy myself in good conscience, with the universal income of activity therefore come, in addition to the allowance, additional rights and duties. Rights to be helped and accompanied, according to the specificities of each one, with this public service of insertion, in return we make sure that the duties are respected, that is to say that each one tries really to find an activity, which must of course be adapted to the characteristics of each, because emancipation is to know that if the Nation owes us something, we owe it something in return.

A contract of engagement and reciprocal responsibility will be generalized and signed, displaying for the beneficiaries of the universal income of activity, unemployed, the right to an accompaniment, and the obligation of inscription in a course of insertion, which prevents him from refusing more than two reasonable offers of employment or activity in his contract.

What I mean by that is that it is also in a course of responsibility that everyone will be registered. It is not a question of saying that one has to enroll in a training in a mechanical way, as one does it today too often, without expectation of employment and with ubiquitous situations that we all knew, where people say to you "it's been 5 years that I'm in computer training, I'm 59, it works very well, and after, when they send me to Pôle emploi they tell me my poor sir, you're 59, 59 you are no longer employed. At first it's absurd in the society we live in, and then it's typically someone we did not accompany.

Because we are going to invest in support, because I want it to be more human, more precise, it is obvious that the person who is in this situation is not intended, perhaps, to find a full-time job, but it has its form of employment to find, its activity, either in a company that will be adapted, or with a time that will be developed, or in other structures, this support is the investment we make, but it is counterbalanced by the fact that one can not leave anyone in a form of minority, and therefore of lack of dignity. And I know that all those who are there, who have been fighting for years or decades, in big associations, in the big networks that hold the solidarity of our country, are sensitive to that, because they get there and because they do a little what you did, sir, who is a rope, is that even the one who is thought to never have a place in productive employment, he has something to teach others, and it undoubtedly has a place in the social work, in the accompaniment, and in a job, an activity which is to be recognized and remunerated.

The universal income of activity will therefore be the counterpart of the public service of integration. Universal and guaranteeing equal treatment for all, all over the territory on the one hand, designed so that poverty is not, at worst a transitional state, and the return to activity is as fast as possible on the other hand, thanks to an accompaniment of the people really put in place.

As the public service of integration, the universal income of activity will have to be conceived in a concerted way with all the concerned actors, the communities, the associations, the people in situation of poverty, the social workers, and I ask the government to conduct this broad consultation, Madam Minister, so that we can also present the universal income of activity in the bill in 2020, and that if territories, structures are already candidates, we can experiment first forms, for also to be able to evaluate them.

Our collective obligation is now that the actions we have planned will have many effects, and will actually bear fruit on the ground. Only then will we be able to begin the transformation of our social model, which I wish to wear. And I want here too, I will conclude on this point, a method of evaluation rigorous, collective, which associates at the same time experts, scientists, academics, but also the poor people. We need their eyes, their reactions, not because of our knowledge, but because it is the very condition of the effectiveness of our policy, to make sure that we respond to situations that are not administrative boxes checked, but the human realities of daily life, and I therefore hope that a broad, open and transparent monitoring and evaluation system will be put in place right now, which will make it possible to monitor the development of these two major projects, but above all the implementation of all the other concrete measures, announced and presented in the plan, and the philosophy that I have just outlined today. It is also for that reason that I will gather every 6 months all the actors to ensure a tight follow-up of the implementation of this new policy, because it is the commitment of the whole Nation.

You will understand, ladies and gentlemen, this plan of prevention and the fight against poverty is not a charity plan, it is not a charity plan because it is not a question of allowing to live a very little in poverty, it is a question of getting out of poverty, it is not a charity plan because it is not a question of addressing a part of the population by devoting to it additional means, by explaining that the others have only to work, or others, and to nourish the divisions, it is at the heart of the project that I form for our Nation, the productive project, the educational project, the solidarist and humanist project, and this triptych is simply the sap of the republican project. All I'm talking to you about earlier is just one thing, it's the very root of what the Republic is, nothing else, nothing else, and it's an element of this twenty-first century welfare state that we must rebuild. What we have to do, what our generation has to do, is no longer to adjust the formidable welfare state that the generation of the late nineteenth century, then that of 1945, followed by the others, had gradually built it is to rebuild a contemporary welfare state that responds to the new risks and instabilities of society, but which guarantees everyone their rights, this place, this emancipation, this dignity of which I spoke earlier.

That is why, deep down, I think that this fight justifies the mobilization of all the forces of the Nation, with a simple conviction on which I will conclude, and that I wanted to tell you: the problem is not you, it's us. The problem is not those who are born or live in poverty, it is those who no longer want to see them, look at them, or get used to, and we must collectively, in this mobilization, accept the idea , also, a conversion of the gaze. We do not solve a problem, we do not carry a strategy for a category of population, we just talk about us and the Republic, and sometimes those who have gone through these paths have more to tell us about the Republic than those who speak most often about them. And so, because you are the heart of that, I want an extreme ambition for this mobilization and what we are doing, a humility as strong as this ambition because I know everything we did not know to do, and perhaps a part of the fighting, that I mentioned, we will not manage to win them, because it is immense and because the Republic is made of impossible fights, but each time raised. So, strong of all our failures, of all our mistakes, and I first, I want us to lead this fight, I think that we can, up to a generation, eradicate the great poverty in our country, I do not I would not have said a few months ago, but I think we can only do it if we have this extreme, extreme ambition of all.

So, I do not know how to tell you if we will get there, I will not suggest indicators to tell you how to judge it, we will judge each and every one of us for ourselves and we will judge it together, but by thinking again this morning, again at these words, I said to myself I am sure of one thing, if it is not France who is leading this battle, I am sure of one thing, nobody will lead it. So we will do it.

Thank you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and / or sentence structure not be perfect.