French govt lowers ambition on anti-poverty measure

The cash-strapped French government is scaling back plans for a national rollout of cash incentives for people to go back to work, to the dismay of the cabinet member fighting for the measure.

The RSA, or Active Solidarity Revenue, aims to help bring France's poor back into the workforce, targetting people who risk losing money by taking up jobs because they would earn less than the benefits they receive while on the dole.

Now being tested in 34 administrative regions, the measure is championed by Martin Hirsch, one of several left-wing activists and politicians whom President Nicolas Sarkozy surprisingly invited into his government in 2007.

But ambitions for how widely it will be applied are being scaled back as the government scrambles to find budget savings to meet its public deficit goals, even after revising up its deficit projection for this year.

"The RSA is a good idea (but) it must be carried out in a budget environment compatible with our public finances," Budget Minister Eric Woerth told France Inter radio on Wednesday, echoing a line taken by Sarkozy a day earlier.

Hirsch, one of France's most prominent anti-poverty campaigners before he became the government's High Commissioner for Active Solidarity, has estimated a national application of the RSA would cost about 2 to 3 billion euros in total.

He responded to the change in tone by telling the weekly Le Pelerin he did not want a "cut price" RSA.

"The RSA is an investment. At the beginning it will cost some money to get things going but in the end it is the whole country which will benefit," he said in an advance copy of the interview which will be published in Thursday's Le Pelerin.

Sarkozy has charged Hirsch with cutting the number of French living in poverty by a third over the next few years. Some 7.1 million people in France live below the poverty line of 817 euros per month, or 60 percent of the median income.

Opposition Socialists, some of whom have accused left-wingers who joined the government of being traitors, were quick to highlight the divisions and accuse the government of breaking its promises.

"It is the abandoning of a programme on which we had agreed," Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent Socialist deputy, told Canal+ television.

Hirsch would only say after Wednesday's cabinet meeting that discussions over the RSA were still underway and the government had a goal to which it was sticking.