The last departmental assembly was an opportunity for a heated exchange between communist representatives and the President of the General Council on the issue of social fraud.
Eric Ciotti made this argument one of his favorite themes in the role of the “hard-liner” he has assigned to himself in political life.
To give it substance, he likes to accuse the communists, who he sees as defenders of all… illegal rights.
This is a role that the departmental representatives do not accept, and even less so a certain skill in “interpreting” numbers to give weight to his supposed truths.
It seems that the president of the General Council (CG06) has crossed the line… The response from the three representatives leaves no doubt about its meaning, and they will no longer tolerate certain statements without documentation!
Declaration of Noël ALBIN – Francis TUJAGUE – Jacques VICTOR,
Communist General Councilors of Alpes-Maritimes
Our commitment to the ethics of debate leads us on one hand to regret that the President finds as his only response to our arguments the distortion of our words to try to make us say what we have never declared. On the other hand, to clarify our arguments so that everyone can have a more exact understanding.
In our successive statements on the subject, it was never a question of excusing or trivializing any social welfare fraud, which is, in principle, unacceptable to us.
What we have been denouncing for several years, since it has unfortunately become a lamentable habit on the part of the President of the General Council, is the most demagogic instrumentalization on this problem.
Even going so far as to engage in highly questionable statistical manipulations to add more weight to his demonstration by including in the figures attributed to fraud sums relating to categories that in no way involve fraudulent intent, such as notably rejected claims and overpayments.
We are not the only ones to recall this, as the Constitutional Council itself, seized on these questions, had clearly affirmed it.
However, these two categories represent the majority of the figure made public by Éric CIOTTI, 18.3 million euros, whereas the reality of the accounts shows that these reprehensible behaviors are the actions of only an infinitesimal minority and represent only marginal sums.
In any case, far removed from the 60 to 80 billion euros of tax fraud each year in our country, which would represent a loss of 2,000 billion euros at the scale of the European Union, according to figures from a study conducted at the request of the European Commission. Or the employer frauds on social contributions, which amounted to between 20.1 and 24.9 billion euros in 2012, according to a recent report by the Court of Auditors.
These are highly damaging fraudulent methods for the finances of the Republic, but for which, on the other hand, the President of the General Council remains eerily silent.
This does not mean excusing one with the other, all equally blameworthy, but situating the scale and acknowledging the manifest inequality of treatment highlighted by the demagoguery employed by the President of the General Council.
Surely, these types of “electoral posturing” will not stimulate growth, the only lever likely to create jobs needed to tackle mass unemployment. For that, investment remains the surest means of achieving it, starting with public investment, which is assured 73% by communities and not the austerity that the President of the General Council persists in imposing, akin to the VALLS government that stifles local communities under the pretext of “savings”.
This is precisely what we proposed at this assembly and which the President of the General Council chose to ignore.
