why it could slip into the hands of thousands of eligible people

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At a time when a potential increase in energy prices is looming for 2025, this is a particularly welcome boost to support energy costs: the energy checkgeneralized since 2018 to millions of French people (subject to resource conditions).

At the same time, the Barnier government is calling for 60 billion savings. The energy check remains relevant for 2025, but it must undergo a reform as part of the finance bill… and could slip through the fingers of the new beneficiaries.

Associations and players in the energy sector are furious, after months of warnings.

An envelope of 900 million euros in 2025… but a reform

Increase in electricity tax, shift in the indexation of retirement pensions to inflation on 1^is July 2025, rising taxation for (very) large companies… As hammered out by Michel Barnier since his arrival at Matignon more than a month ago, the finance bill for 2025 (PLF2025) is placed under the sign of savings.

The energy check doesn’t cut it. Even if it still benefits from an envelope within the state budget for 2025 – up to 900 million euros -, the system will undergo some modifications, as provided for in article 60 of PLF2025.

Thus, the government aspires to the energy check will be “protected” in 2025with a check always “sent automatically” to households already receiving benefits. And another part [pour laquelle] households will have to report themselves,” explained Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher on October 11.

Only 3% of new eligible beneficiaries received the check in 2024

The problem is that few new beneficiaries (who must take their own steps) access the system. In any case, this is what the Consommation Logement Cadre de Vie (CLCV) association indicates, in a press release, published Wednesday October 16, 2024.

The association figures at 3 % the proportion of new potential beneficiaries having obtained the energy check in 2024. However, the system concerns 5.6 million households“often living below the poverty line”.

The government is defending the establishment, since July 4, 2024, of an online portal to allow (new) eligible households to request to receive the energy check.

This is particularly the case for young people who have recently entered working life,The homes of which income fell between 2021 and 2022 and families with experienced a birth in 2022. Thousands of potential beneficiaries therefore, but many of whom have not been able to access state aid.

The end of the automation of the device in question

It was also this summer that a “catch-up” session was set up, after quacks were noted regarding access to the energy check last spring. In fact, a number of households (although eligible) had not received this aid, normally paid automatically in April 2024.

Months later, associations and players in the energy sector are raising their voices again. The hiccups are no longer in the viewfinder, it is now the PLF2025 which is stuck.

In the event of adoption of article 60 of the 2025 finance bill, the automation of the sending of the energy check will be put an end to, this aid which only concerns very modest households and for whom the energy check constitutes a budgetary imperative.

“This situation confirms [nos] strong fears »

The CLCV considers that the adjustments to the energy check force “(new) eligible households to make the request themselves”, at the risk of “excluding, for non-recoursea large number of them from the device”.

This situation confirms the strong fears that we had expressed to the ministerial administration, given the lack of communication and the difficulty for the households concerned to register on the digital platform set up.

A “temporary” adjustment?

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, on October 11, refuted any “frontal attack on the system by the government” mentioned by the CLCV. “Since the end of the housing tax, there has been a change in the way of accessing this energy check,” admitted the minister on October 11.

[Le chèque énergie] is no longer automatic since we no longer have the files to be able to match it with household tax income.

This is contested by the CLCV and the 17 signatories of the press release, for whom “the finance bill nevertheless gives the administration the power to establish a list of beneficiaries of the energy check by crossing the reference tax income with the number of tax shares”.

The Minister of Ecological Transition does not make it a priority, instead putting forward a temporary system before the return “eventually, fairly quickly”, of the automatic energy check.

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