2023-02-16 23:00:00
The summary
Pursuant to Article 57 of the organic law of August 1, 2001 relating to finance laws, Christine Lavarde, special rapporteur for the “Ecology, sustainable development and mobility” mission, carried out a budgetary control on the financing of the risk of withdrawal clay swelling (RGA).
The drama of “houses cracked” by the phenomenon of swelling shrinkage of clay soils (RGA) is spreading strongly, amplified by the effects of climate change. While nearly 50 percent of the national territory and more than 10 million individual houses are now exposed to this peril, the conditions for covering it within the natural disaster compensation scheme, says CatNat, are deeply unsatisfactory. The rate of eviction of victims is indeed considerable.
In deficit since 2017, the financial balance of the CatNat scheme is threatened in the medium term by the consequences of global warming, and in particular by the RGA risk, the average annual cost of which has reached 1 billion euros for 5 years. The summer 2022 drought episode will be the costliest in history, exceeding 2.5 billion euros. Between 2020 and 2050, the cost of drought claims should exceed 40 billion euros.
If there is no financially sustainable “miracle” solution to compensate all the victims of the RGA phenomenon, we can only note that the ordinance issued by the Government on February 8, 2023 does not bring real progress. On the contrary, by concentrating compensation on the most serious damage, it calls into question the insurance logic of the CatNat scheme. Furthermore, it in no way addresses the problem of the regime’s financial sustainability and eludes the fundamental issue of prevention.
Because that is where the shoe pinches. Although senatorial work since 2019 has consistently highlighted it, prevention on existing buildings remains the “blind spot” of RGA risk management. The special rapporteur thus formulates a series of recommendations to accelerate and amplify the experiments of prevention techniques, in particular thanks to the mobilization of the Barnier fund.
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