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MAP: Where France is spending its €7bn fund to help self-employed

France has so far spent roughly €3bn of the ‘solidarity fund’ set up to help small businesses weather the coronavirus crisis. Here’s a look at who’s getting it.

Published: 15 May 2020 17:13 CEST
MAP: Where France is spending its €7bn fund to help self-employed
Shops had to shut down in France during the lockdown. Photo: AFP

Small businesses suffered especially badly from France’s strict nationwide lockdown, which brought the economy to a virtual standstill for two months.

From March 17th to May 11th, millions of people in France found themselves with no or little work.

To avoid what President Emmanuel Macron said would be “adding fear of bankruptcy and unemployment to the health crisis,” the French government quickly ramped up emergency schemes to help businesses cope with the heavy losses.

“The state will bear the financial burden of the people who have to stay home,” Macron said.

In addition to a vastly expanding the national furloughing scheme known as chômage partiel (partial unemployment), where businesses could have the state foot 80 percent of their employee's salaries, the government launched a brand new 'solidarity fund'.

Funded by the state, regional authorities and through donations, the fund would give up to €1,500 to what is France is called micro-entreprises – self employed people or businesses with less than 10 employees – for the months of March, April and May.

Originally at some €1.3 billion, it grew into €7 billion. 

READ MORE: All you need to know about financial help in France for self-employed and business

More than 2.3 million grants 
 
So far, some €3.11 billion have been spent on 2,300,211 grants for March and April, according to the economy ministry.
 
Contacted by The Local, the economy ministry said it per today cannot say how many of these grants were extended for the month of March and April respectively. 
 
Businesses were able to apply for both months, and will be able to apply for May too in June. The requirement to qualify for the fund in March was to have lost more than 50 percent of the income compared to the same month last year.
 
 
The criteria for April were changed after small business owners complained the comparison would be unfair – the 'yellow vest' protests had already severely decreased incomes for many in April 2019. For a detailed overview on the rules, click here.
 
However, as of April 21st, a little more than 703,000 grants had been extended for the month of March.
 
Most in Paris
 
On the map below you can see the total distribution of grants on the different French regions.
 
 
Photo: Economy Ministry
 
The greater Paris Île-de-France region benefited the most (€633.36 million) of the total grants extended, followed by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region (€407.05 million) and the two southern regions Alpes-Maritimes (€338.7 million) and Occitanie (€331.49 million).
 
Inside Île-de-France, most of the grants have gone to the centre of Paris itself, €211.8 million in total.
 
 
Photo: Economy Ministry

 
If you click on this link, it takes you to the government's website where you find an interactive version of the same map that allows you to break it down further, to see in detail where grants have gone on a local level.
 
Most individual self-employed
 
Broken down in categories, the majority of people who have benefited from the scheme are registered self-employed individuals (55.5 percent), while small business owners account for nearly 30 percent of the total grants. 
 
 
 
 
Photo: Economy Ministry

 
The final two categories are 'societé par action simplifié' (SAS) – a specific judicial business category in France – and 'others'.
 
Most to the trade sector
 

The graphic below breaks the different categories into socio-professional ones, so you can see how much different sectors have benefited from the fund. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So far, more than €524 million in grants have been extended to shop-keepers and other traders for March and April. As France asked all non-essential shops to close down during the lockdown, anyone whose shop was not a food store, boulangerie, cheese monger or butcher's shop was likely to be required to close down by an official decree.
 
Anyone concerned by the decree automatically qualifies for the solidarity fund – provided they had less than 10 employees and an average annual income of less than €1 million.
 
Then there is the hotel and restaurant businesses.
Around €380 million has been given to this sector, in which businesses either had close down or severely reduce to only delivery or takeaway services. Incomes in this sector have plunged and will likely continue to do so for the weeks and even months ahead, as it was not able to reopen with the rest of the country on May 11th.
 
Cafés, restaurants and bars could be able to get back in businesses on June 2nd, but only in so-called green areas – and only if these areas stay green until then.
 
 
The country's construction sector has received more than €375 million in grants. People doing other service activities – hairdressers for example – have got around €328 million, then there is what is defined as 'scientific and technical activities', 'health and social action' and  'transport and storage'.
 

'Something to live off'
 
€1,500 is more than France’s minimum wage (€1,219). For many, it is far from enough to cover their expenses, but the government's goal was above all to ensure that people got enough to put food on the table that month.

 
“I get a lot of messages from people saying, ‘I received the €1,500, it’s not a gold mine, but at least I have something to live off,” France's Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told BFMTV.
 
Extended throughout 2020

This week, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that the fund would stay in place for the country's tourism sector – which has not yet been able to reopen – until the end of 2020. 

For this sector, the government will change the current criteria for accessing the fund so that businesses with up to 20 employees (against 10 today) and an average annual income of up to €2 million (against €1 million today) may apply for the fund.

If you are unsure about how to apply, click here for our explanatory article.

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TRAVEL NEWS

What’s the deal with passport stamping in France?

There are clear guidelines in place about who should have their passport stamped when they enter or leave France - but the letter of the law doesn't always seem to be applied on the ground. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 17 May 2024 14:24 CEST
What's the deal with passport stamping in France?

When you pass through a French border control post, officers will check your passport and – in some cases – stamp the date of your entry or exit of the country onto one of the blank pages in the booklet.

Although the system should be clear and simple, it becomes complicated when conflicting information is given on the ground.

Here’s what the rules say, and whether it’s really a problem if your passport is incorrectly stamped.

Who should be stamped?

The purpose of the date stamps for entry and exit is to calculate how long you have been in France, and therefore whether you have overstayed your allowed time – whether that is the time allowed by a short-stay Schengen visa or the visa-free 90-day allowance that certain non-EU nationals benefit from. 

Those people who are exempt from 90-day restrictions should therefore not have their passports stamped.

EU passport – people who have an EU passport should not have it stamped, because they have the right to unlimited stays due to EU freedom of movement.

Dual nationals – people who have passports of both EU and non-EU countries should not be stamped when they are travelling on their EU passport. However, because the passports of dual nationals are not ‘linked’, those travelling on their non-EU passports will be stamped, unless they have other proof of residency.

READ ALSO What are the rules for dual-nationals travelling in France?

French residents – the passports of non-EU citizens who have a residency permit in France (carte de séjour) should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in France for as long as their permit is valid.

Visa holders – people who have a long-stay visa or a short-stay visitor visa should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in France for as long as their visa is valid. 

Tourists/visitors – people making short visits to France who do not have a visa should be stamped, with the stamps keeping track of their 90-day allowance. Visitors from nationalities who do not benefit from the 90-day rule (eg Indians) are also stamped.

Travel practicalities

When crossing a French border, you should present your passport along with other documents – visa or carte de séjour – if relevant. Don’t wait for border guards to ask whether you are a resident.

It should be noted that the carte de séjour is not a travel document and cannot be used to cross borders, not even internal Schengen zone borders. The only valid travel documents for entering France are a passport or national ID card. Any other forms of ID – driving licence, residency card etc – cannot be used for travel purposes.

Border problems

While the rules on stamping are simple in theory, many readers of The Local have reported having their passports incorrectly stamped at the border, and this seems to be a particular problem for non-EU nationals who are resident in France.

Travellers are also often given incorrect information by border guards – for example being told that only holders of the post-Brexit Article 50 TUE carte de séjour are exempt from stamping, that all non-EU nationals must have their passports stamped or that only being married to a French national exempts you from stamping.

None of these are correct.

It’s also sometimes the case that people whose passports should be stamped – tourists, visitors and second-home owners who don’t have a visa – do not receive the stamp. For frequent visitors this can be a problem because it looks as though they have had a long stay in France, due to their exit not being recorded.

The system of stamping itself is also a bit haphazard with stamps scattered throughout the passport book in random order, so border guards sometimes make mistakes and miss an entry or exit stamp and therefore think that people have overstayed when they haven’t.

So how much of a problem actually is it if your passport is wrongly stamped?

It’s one thing to know the rules yourself, it’s quite another to have an argument with a border guard, in French, when a long queue is building behind you. Numerous Local readers have reported feeling that they had no choice but to accept a stamp when an implacable guard insisted upon it.

But is this really a problem?

One thing is clear – if you are a resident of France then you have the right to re-enter, and your proof of residency (visa or carte de séjour) takes precedence over any passport stamps. So it’s not a question of being barred from the country – it can, however, be inconvenient as it might lead to delays at the border while your passport record is queried.

Meanwhile people who did not receive correct exit stamps can be incorrectly told that they have over-stayed and even be liable for a fine. 

Will the new EES passport control system improve this?

Theoretically, the EU’s new Entry & Exit System – which does away with the manual stamping of passports – should get rid of these problems.

However, as we have seen, theory and what actually happens on the ground are two different things.

The EES system, due to come into effect later this year, brings in two main changes – it makes passport checks more secure by adding diometric data such as fingerprints and facial scans and it does away with manual stamping of passports and replaces it with scans which automatically calculate how long people have been in France.

You can read full details of how it works HERE. 

So that should eliminate the problems of unclear stamps, stamps being read wrongly or passports not getting the stamps they need.

Residents in France – carte de séjour and visa holders – are not required to complete EES checks and should have a separate system at ports, airports and railway terminals.

However, at present it’s pretty common for border guards to give incorrect information to non-EU residents who are resident in the EU – let’s hope that they are properly briefed before EES is deployed.

Have you had problems with passports being incorrectly stamped? Please share your experiences in the comments section below

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