“Unacceptable. To have fought for our rights and given them to foreigners… A shame”, “intolerable and scandalous for all our elders in need”. Although dating from January 2017, a Facebook post has aroused many indignant comments for the past few days. According to this publication, “anyone who arrives in France, without ever having set foot there, can claim, if they are 65 years old, a pension of €709 per month or even €1,157 if they live as a couple”.
This text appears in a photo accompanied by the following comment: “If it is not shameful and discouraging???? We understand this influx!!! The influx referred to here concerns “foreigners who have never worked”. The origin and author of the document photographed are not mentioned.
FAKE OFF
In France, the solidarity allowance for the elderly (Aspa), formerly called “minimum old age” – and which is not a “retirement” -, can be paid, on condition of making a request, to the elderly. aged 65 and over (or aged 62 if unable to work) whose income does not exceed €916.78. Foreigners living in France can benefit from it, provided that they reside in France “stably” and “have continuously had a residence permit authorizing them to work for at least ten years”, specifies Service-public.fr website. Refugees and stateless persons, in particular, are exempted from this condition. The assertion that “anyone who arrives in France, without ever having set foot there, can claim, if they are 65 years old, a pension of €709 per month or even €1,157 if they live as a couple” is therefore false.
In addition, in 2022, the maximum amount allocated for Aspa is €916.78 per month. For a couple where both members are entitled to this allowance, the maximum amount is €1423.31 per month. It should be noted that this is a differential allocation, as recalled by the Ministry of Labor in 2011. That is to say that the Aspa makes it possible to guarantee an income of €916.78 per month in total for a person aged 65 and over whose income is less than this amount. It may therefore be less than the maximum monthly amount of €916.78.
Outdated data
The figures indicated in the text nourishing a hatred of foreigners actually correspond to the maximum amount of the Aspa in 2010. This shows that the original text at the origin of the viral publication probably dates from 2011 at the latest, because the Aspa has been revalued on April 1 of each year since 2010. Moreover, the Belgian site Hoax-Net already explained in October 2015 the reasons why a pre-existing version of this text, citing the same figures, was false.
Recent comments to the 2017 Facebook post no doubt appear in favor of the 2022 presidential election, when the issue of immigration took an important place in Marine Le Pen’s campaign. Moreover, the president of the National Rally had wrongly affirmed, in February 2019 during a political rally, that a “freshly arrived migrant” could benefit from greater financial assistance than a “retired person who has worked and contributed all his life”, taking in particular as an example the possibility of perceiving the Aspa. The misleading statement had, at the time, been the subject of many fact-checking articles.