Your phone should soon stop ringing several times a day with numbers that are unknown to you. This is at least the hope of the Senate, which adopted Thursday unanimously and definitively a bill already voted in the National Assembly to prohibit the commercial canvassing of a holder of a personal training account (CPF). “I mean here the government’s determination to prevent any abuse of the fundamental right of access to training,” said the Minister Delegate for Vocational Education and Training, Carole Grandjean, before the senators.
This bill “will give us effective levers to better prevent, fight and sanction abuse and fraud at the CPF”, she welcomed, specifying that the text will make it possible “to prohibit abusive canvassing and to sanction more effectively those who practice it, including on online social networks”. The Minister recalled that any breach would be punishable by a fine of up to “75,000 euros for a natural person” and “375,000 euros for a legal person”. Fraud increased sharply in 2021, detailed in July Tracfin, Bercy’s financial intelligence unit. Reports of suspicion transmitted rose to 116, against only 10 in 2020. This represents suspicions of fraud of 43.2 million euros, against 7.8 million a year earlier.
No extension to other canvassing areas
For its final adoption by Parliament, the text voted by the Senate, with a majority on the right, had to be identical to that adopted in the National Assembly, on the initiative of the group of MoDem deputies. The senators thus rejected amendments tabled by the ecologist Mélanie Vogel who notably wished to extend the ban on “unconsented commercial canvassing to all areas of commercial prospecting, not just the CPF”. The rapporteur for the Social Affairs Committee, Martin Lévrier, called on elected officials not to make any changes to the text “so as not to delay the entry into force of this useful and awaited text”.
After this adoption, Carole Grandjean now wishes “to complete this regulatory action of the CPF, by ensuring that it is better targeted towards the real needs of the economy, that is to say towards the trades in tension as much as jobs of the future”. She specified that she was meeting the social partners on Thursday with the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt “so that they present to us the summary of their joint work”.
The CPF, which has existed since January 1, 2019, allows any active person to acquire training rights in euros and no longer in hours, via an online platform. It is the Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC) which directly remunerates the training companies, sometimes empty shells seeking to siphon off public money.