Allow all students, wherever they are in the territory, to be able to benefit from a moderate price catering offer: Parliament validated this device on Wednesday, by a final vote of the Senate.
The text from Senator Pierre-Antoine Levi (Centrist Union), adopted at first reading by the upper house almost two years ago, had been modified by the deputies.
"There are imperfections", agreed its author, who nevertheless wanted the text to be adopted without further modification, with the aim that it could be applicable from the start of the next school year. The vote was acquired by 267 votes in favor and 77 abstentions.
"Favorable" to its adoption, the Minister of Higher Education Sylvie Retailleau noted that the bill "raises questions about its implementation". "My services are currently fully mobilized in order to make it operational (...) and for it to come into force as quickly as possible and if possible at the start of the school year", she added.
The text stipulates that "in each territory, students can benefit from a moderately priced catering offer near their place of study". This offer can be offered in classic university restaurants, managed by the Crous (Regional Center for University and School Works), or, in the absence of a university restaurant, by structures, public or private, approved by this same network.
In "white areas" far from any moderately priced catering offer, students will be able to benefit from "financial aid". This so that they can "pay in whole or in part the price of a meal consumed or purchased" from a contracted organization on their territory.
This last point was introduced by the National Assembly, instead of Mr. Levi's initial idea of creating a "student restaurant ticket".
If the current price of a meal at the Crous for non-scholarship holders is 3.30 euros, the precise terms of the system will still have to be defined by decree. Its cost is estimated at 250 million euros, said the senator.
For its rapporteur Jean Hingray (centrist), the text "simply responds to student precariousness and also to a principle of universality".
"The vagueness still surrounds the device", regretted the socialist Sabine Van Hegue, fearing "inefficiency", because of its complexity. Pierre Ouzoulias (CRCE with a communist majority) insisted on the need to give the Crous network "the budgetary means to satisfy this new service".
The Crous network has some 800 points of sale on 700 sites. But the territorial network does not cover certain places of study in medium-sized towns or in rural areas (relocated university branches, small schools, etc.).
At the beginning of February, the Assembly had rejected by one vote a text from the Socialist deputies offering access to meals at one euro for all students, a price today reserved for scholarship holders and precarious workers.
04/05/2023 17:49:20 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
