Public officials residing in 133 municipalities close to the Swiss border will benefit from a specific residence allowance of a minimum annual amount of 640 euros, according to a decree published Wednesday in the Official Journal.
This decision, intended to facilitate the housing of civil servants in a local real estate market stretched by its proximity to Geneva, was announced in September by the Minister of Civil Service Stanislas Guerini, but was initially only to concern 61 municipalities of Ain and Haute-Savoie.
The measure was finally extended to all municipalities belonging to the urban unit of these 61 municipalities, which more than doubled the number of municipalities concerned.
Commitment kept. Thank you for supporting the purchasing power of our public agents and for recognizing the specificity of our border territory, rejoiced the Renaissance deputy for Haute-Savoie Antoine Armand on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
According to a map published by the regional daily Le Dauphin Libr, Les Contamines-Montjoie, Abondance and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, in Haute-Savoie, and the municipalities of Farges and Sergy, in Ain, are notably among the beneficiaries of the extension of the device.
Concretely, from December, agents of the municipalities concerned will receive a residence allowance equivalent to 3% of their salary (basic salary).
According to the report from Tuesday’s Council of Ministers, this measure will lead to an increase in remuneration, for the agents concerned, of at least 640 euros per year.
In the 61 municipalities initially targeted by the system, the measure was to benefit 29,000 state agents, hospitals and communities, at a cost of around 25 million euros, Stanislas Guerini detailed in September.
In the report of the Council of Ministers, the government recalls that the 133 municipalities of Ain and Haute-Savoie concerned are experiencing significant recruitment and retention difficulties linked to the cost of living.
These difficulties result in particular in specific tensions for access to housing, faced with competition from salaries in Geneva, increased by the development of cross-border means of transport, and lead to the closure of beds in hospitals and nursing homes, positions not provided in the gendarmerie or even in the services of local authorities.
Beyond this one-off measure, the government has entrusted a more general mission on the housing of civil servants to MP David Amiel (Renaissance). Its proposals are expected in early 2024.
In a press release published on Wednesday, the Force Ouvrière union judged that there was an urgent need to respond to the housing problem in its entirety, in a context of impoverishment of public sector agents and an unprecedented housing crisis.