Non-European and non-grant college students might be disadvantaged of housing help, judges the Constitutional Council | EUROtoday

The Constitutional Council validated, Thursday February 19, one of many articles of the finance invoice for 2026 aimed toward excluding non-European and non-grant college students from the good thing about customized housing help (APL). This measure is a type of “national preference”in accordance with its detractors.

The measure, which requires the beneficiaries to have been current for not less than two years in France and the main points of that are referred to a decree, had been denounced by the Socialist Party (PS) and deputies from La France insoumise (LFI), Ecologists and the Democratic and Republican Left (communists and abroad) of their respective appeals to the Wise Men on the funds.

The Housing Foundation submitted a contribution to oppose it, signed by round fifteen scholar associations and unions. She identified, in a press launch, that overseas college students had been 3 times extra doubtless than their French counterparts to make use of meals help in 2023, in accordance with the Observatory of Student Life. She additionally pressured that their funds will likely be reduce by “150 to 250 euros per month”whereas the APL is the“one of the only financial aids to which they had access”.

“This measure, establishing among students a true national preference in housing assistance and an excessive constraint for foreign students, seems to us to be manifestly contradictory to the principle of equal access to education as well as to the possibility for everyone to have decent housing”had pleaded the PS.

And, as LFI recalled, the Constitutional Council had censured, in April 2024, the very fact of constructing the granting of social advantages conditional on residence in France of not less than 5 years for individuals who don’t work and thirty months for others, seeing it as a “disproportionate harm” to “rights to social protection”.

“Homeless situations and dropouts”

However, the Sages estimated Thursday that the deputies continued a “objective of general interest”in search of to “control the evolution of related expenses” to the APL, and that the precept of equality “is not opposed to the legislator regulating different situations differently, nor to deviating from equality for reasons of general interest”.

However, they expressed an interpretation reservation: the legislation should be utilized making an allowance for the preamble to the Constitution, which supplies particularly that “the Nation assures the individual (…) the conditions necessary for [son] development “ and must ensure “adequate means of livelihood”.

Differences in access to social benefits for French people and non-EU foreigners already exist, for example for the RSA, conditional on holding a residence permit dating back at least five years. Non-European students were also charged different registration fees from other students.

For constitutionalist Anne-Charlène Bezzina, interviewed by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the decision of the Constitutional Council does not constitute “a total break in jurisprudence” but one “hardening”.

“The Constitutional Council approves an unprecedented legal shift towards the principle of national preference drawn directly from the program of the National Front”denounced LFI deputy Eric Coquerel on the X network. Student and community organizations also deplored the decision.

Manuel Domergue, director of studies at the Housing Foundation, expressed to AFP his “disappointment” that this measure is not “not censored even though it is a measure of national preference which would have a very concrete effect on foreign students, who are already precarious”.

“It’s a decision that surprises us”reacted Suzanne Nijdam, president of FAGE, the first student organization, associated with the appeal filed by the Housing Foundation. “It’s very possible that we react”she continued, and “we are continuing to work to see to what extent, by decree, things could at least improve on this criterion”.

“We will continue to mobilize against this with the foreign student associations, all the student union organizations. We’re not going to stop there.”assured Manon Moret, general secretary of the UNEF. “It’s an unbearable decision”added Léa Jules-Clément, co-secretary normal of the Student Union, who says she fears “situations of homelessness and dropouts”.