The 2023 energy check, the amount of which varies between 48 euros and 277 euros, can be used until March 31, 2024. It will be paid “from April 21” around “5.8 million households”announced Monday, March 13, the Minister of Energy Transition, on the airwaves of RMC. “You can use it to pay your electricity bill, gas, wood, all the energy used to heat you”fuel oil included, added Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“Shipments will begin from April 21 (…)without any procedure to be carried out for the beneficiaries”, the ministry said in a statement. It will be sent automatically by mail “to the poorest 20% of households, whose reference tax income per consumption unit (RFR/UC) is less than 11,000 euros in 2021”according to the ministry.
Paid once a year
Distributed since 2018, the energy check is paid once a year in the spring, to which was added at the end of 2022 an exceptional check of 100 to 200 euros for 12 million households. In addition, and also subject to resources, a fuel check of 100 to 200 euros, aid of 50 to 200 euros for those heating with wood and a fuel allowance of 100 euros for low-income workers have also been announced since the end of 2022.
The government has also limited the increase in electricity sales tariffs to 15% in 2023, following 4% in 2022.
If the price shield on electricity and gas, rebates at the pump or even the energy check enabled France to post the lowest inflation rate in the euro zone last year, these measures represent a net cost of nearly 43 billion euros over two years.
The Court of Auditors on Friday urged the government to come out ” definitively “ of “whatever it takes” and to make the recovery of public finances degraded by successive crises “a national priority”curbing a lack of ambition in this area.
