The idea did not fall on deaf ears. The Minister of Health assured on Tuesday that the government “will support a parliamentary mission” about a biometric Vitale card to fight against social fraud. This proposal, demanded for a long time by the right and the extreme right, “deserves to be worked on”, affirmed François Braun.
“We must ensure that the benefits are paid correctly, that the contributions and social contributions are collected in an exhaustive manner”, he declared to the National Assembly, assuring that the executive would have “no complacency against those who cheat.
Experimentation of a dematerialized card in progress
Advocating “a rational approach to this subject through an objective assessment of the shortfall and the adoption of appropriate measures”, the Minister recalled that the experimentation of a dematerialized Vitale card was in progress and that it “should be evaluate it”.
The minister also deemed it necessary to “evaluate the conditions of effectiveness (and) feasibility in connection with professionals” of a biometric card, raised by the deputy for Isère Thibault Bazin (LR). Consequently, “the government will support a parliamentary mission to monitor the ongoing deployment of the new Vitale card, without any taboos and without prejudice, and to assess its relevance and possible developments”, he added.
Concession to the parliamentary right
This concession to the parliamentary right is made “at the request of Prime Minister” Elisabeth Borne, he said, the executive wanting to be “attentive to constructive ideas to move our country forward in a cross-partisan way” , while a bitter debate has just begun on its “purchasing power” bill.
This positioning will appear as a change of foot because the presidential majority had rejected a bill by LR senators on the same subject at the end of 2020, in particular in the name of “protection of privacy and personal data”.
This did not prevent three of the five contenders for the presidential primary from the same party (Xavier Bertrand, Michel Barnier, Eric Ciotti) from taking up this idea, which was already on Nicolas Sarkozy’s program in 2012, but also that of Marine Le Pen in the last three presidential elections.