Imbroglio at the Assembly on the meal at 1 euro for students

There will be no meal at 1 euro for all students as the left wanted. And there will also not be, in the law, a meal guarantee at 1 euro for scholarship and precarious students, as the government wanted. Such is the result of the debates which took place this Thursday in the Assembly.

The “niche” of the PS had put on the agenda a bill so that all students benefit from the meal at 1 euro in the places of restoration of the regional centers of university and school works (CROUS). In committee, last week, the deputies of the majority had amended the text to limit the device only to scholarship and precarious students, as is the case today, while showing themselves in favor of the sustainability of the device, in the law, for these students alone.

A “devitalized” text

In the hemicycle, the PS deputy carrying the bill, Fatiha Keloua Hachi, had an amendment adopted on Thursday returning to the initial position, namely the meal at 1 euro for all students. The text had been, according to her, “devitalized” by the parliamentarians of the majority.

Given the number of deputies present in the hemicycle on Thursday morning, some tweets welcomed – too soon – the subsequent adoption of the bill. It was only rejected by one vote – 184 against, 183 for – after the majority defeated the recall of its troops.

“A crisis measure”

For the government, the 1 euro meal, which had been extended to all students during the Covid pandemic , was “a crisis measure, designed to respond to an exceptional situation”. The Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau, took the opportunity to recall that the government had taken other social measures, such as exceptional solidarity aid (100 euros paid to scholarship students and those who benefit from a annual aid from the CROUS and personalized housing aid), the freezing of registration fees and rents in university residences and the aid of 10 million euros granted to food aid associations for students.

The deputies of the majority defended a measure of “equity” and not “equality”, explains one of them. “What we had imagined seeing disappear thanks to the end of the Covid, deconfinement and the measures taken by the government, continues”, insisted the PS deputy, Boris Vallaud, referring to the queues of students. for food aid, and by defending the principle of the “generalization” of the meal at 1 euro.

“Wealthy students, if any, will not rush to CROUS restaurants because the price will have been lowered from 3.30 euros to 1 euro […], they’re going to have lunch somewhere else anyway. An argument disputed by the deputies of the majority.

Relaunch stock market reform

The government was called into question by the opposition on a subject for which it was in favor of progress – the registration in the law of the current device. The Renaissance deputies and some of the LR deputies voted against the rewritten and expanded bill. The text, supported by the entire left, had received the support of the deputies of the National Rally.

“It is not normal that today, in France, the students are hungry”, criticized the deputy RN, Caroline Parmentier. “It is the government and the presidential majority who set up the CROUS meal at 1 euro for scholarship and precarious students”, recalled Sylvie Retailleau, in a tweet. In the hemicycle, she also mentioned “first avenues for improvement” on stock market reform for the next school year.