A bill adopted Wednesday by the Senate provides that students who do not have a university restaurant near their place of study or internship, must be able to eat at a reduced price or be helped to do so. But not in the form of a restaurant voucher. Explanations.
The light at the end of the parliamentary tunnel but the end of the student restaurant ticket project. The bill to promote access for all students to a moderate price catering offer was adopted on Wednesday by the Senate at second reading. An implementing decree from the Council of State has yet to come to specify the conditions of application.
Clearly, this law provides that students who do not have a university restaurant near their place of study or internship, can eat at a reduced price or get help to do so.
This law therefore aims to offer territorial coverage of catering piloted or approved by the CROUS for all students (because high schools, colleges, resource, expertise and sports performance centres, health and medico-social establishments, etc. may enter into agreements with the CROUS). As a last resort, financial assistance will be offered.
According to estimates from the auditions currently being carried out, between 200,000 and 500,000 students could benefit from it.
An initial project 6.60 euros
At first, a member of the Les Républicains, Anne-Laure Blin, had hoped for a lunch voucher where the student would pay 3.30 euros from his pocket, the equivalent of a full meal (starter, main course, dessert) at Crous. The State and the social works of the universities would then have added 3.30 euros to bring the total 6.60 euros. The elected also hoped for an application from January … 2022. But this provision was deemed too limited for a certain number of students.
On the form, the money would have been credited in a dematerialized way on a card which would have been credited like a ticket.
For their part, the usual restaurant voucher issuers were curious but reserved. The idea is good but it turns out that such a device already exists, Edenred pointed out to MoneyVox. In 2020, we responded to the request from the Ministry of Higher Education to deploy an emergency aid program exclusively for students in distress. These social vouchers are already distributed in the field via the Crous.