During the confrontation between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Eric Zemmour on BFMTV Thursday evening, a subject inevitably occupied a good part of the discussions. To support his anti-immigration theses, the polemicist assured him: “At the end of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate, there will be two million legal immigrants who will have returned” to France. Later in the debate, it was social issues that were addressed by the two men. For Eric Zemmour, social fraud is estimated at 50 billion euros each year.
Where do these numbers come from? 20 minutes fact-checked these two statements from Eric Zemmour.
FAKE OFF
As Our colleagues at BFMTV noted it during the debate, the number of additional people welcomed in France over the past five years is overestimated by the polemicist. Above all, it does not take departures into account. “This is what allows Eric Zemmour to create confusion”, explains to 20 minutes the demographer Hervé Le Bras.
The number of new residence permits issued by France should reach approximately 1.3 million over five years in France. A figure that does not include foreign students returning to their home university, expatriates returning home or posted workers who have finished their contracts.
Data which crosses the figures established by INSEE from the census. According to these, France welcomes around 270,000 additional foreigners each year. On the scale of the five years of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate, the number of foreigners arriving in France should be below 1.5 million foreigners admitted. Here again, it does not take into account departures, which should, according to INSEE be around 200,000 in five years – the data for recent years are not yet known. In his remarks, Eric Zemmour therefore approximately doubled the number of foreigners actually received in France during the mandate of the President of the Republic.
Hervé Le Bars adds: “More than half of the arrivals do not come from the countries implied by Eric Zemmour, namely Africa and more particularly the Muslim countries. You have to divide the figures by about two ”. In 2019, 31.9% of arrivals come from Europe, and 41% from Africa, as shown in the table below:
Social fraud: a thousand miles from official figures
On the issue of social fraud, Eric Zemmour said that it was “assessed by magistrate Charles Prats at 50 billion euros”. Except that the magistrate’s estimates have already been pinned down for their inaccuracy, as pointed out Release.
The estimates published by the Court of Audit in September 2020 at the request of the Social Affairs Committee in the Senate are much lower. “In 2019, the main social organizations detected 1 billion euros in losses suffered and avoided in the context of the fight against fraud. “