by Nicole Teke | Dec 20, 2015 | News
As part of an electoral alliance, the Socialists and the Greens in the French region of Aquitaine committed to carry out a pilot with an unconditional minimum income, as a step in the direction of a basic income. They won the elections, now it is time to deliver.
French regional elections held this month received wide coverage by the international press because of the dramatic rise of the far right party Front National. Meanwhile, an interesting development the basic income movement went largely unnoticed. In the south-western region of Aquitaine, one of thirteen mainland French regions, major strides towards a basic income have been made.
Five months ago, the Aquitaine Regional Council – the elected regional parliament – adopted a motion to conduct pilots to test the implementation of an “unconditional RSA”. The Revenu de Solidarité Active (Active Solidarity Income), or RSA, is the means-tested national minimum income. The unconditional RSA would entail scrapping the work requirement, and would make the grant less discriminatory and less bureaucratic. A recent study shows that the RSA uptake is only slightly over half of the eligible beneficiaries.
While this is not an unconditional basic income, it is a major move in that direction. The motion notes that it is a “first step towards a universal basic income” (read the French text here). At the time, the Council had a left-wing majority, headed by the Socialist Party and including the Greens. The initiator of the motion, Green councilor Martine Alcorta, suggested that the pilots should be based on a proposal drafted last March by the French Movement for Basic Income, an affiliate of BIEN.
However, the fate of the basic income pilots depended on the results of the regional elections. Basic income supporters feared that if the left-wing coalition lost the region, the whole project might have been compromised. In the second round of elections on December 13, the Greens and the Socialists merged their lists to beat the right-wing coalition led by the Republicans, and the National Front, running separately. Just a few days before, the two left-wing parties agreed to renew their commitment to unconditional RSA pilots.
This was not an easy task, as the Socialist Alain Rousset, top candidate in the electoral roll and outgoing president of the Regional Council, had been strongly opposed to the pilots. The inclusion of the unconditional RSA experiment in the program means that measures that are closer to a basic income are gaining ground among other political parties. The Greens and the young anti-austerity formation New Deal already support a universal basic income.
Now that the left alliance won the elections, they are to go ahead with the pilots. Martine Alcorta was re-elected in the Regional Council, and the Greens are entitled to two vice-presidents as part of the deal with the Socialists.
If the newly elected regional councilors put their words into actions, a feasibility study will be conducted to come up with different designs for local pilots. The French Movement for a Basic Income has already offered its services to help the Aquitaine Regional Council with the project.
French Movement for a Basic Income, “PS et EELV s’entendent sur le revenu de base en Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes [Socialists and Greens in Aquitaine strike a deal on basic income],” December 12, 2015.
Stanislas Jourdan, “French Regional Council of Aquitaine to assess feasibility of basic income pilots,” Basic Income News, July 9, 2015.
by Adrian Planken | Nov 1, 2015 | News
The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs wants cities who are interested in experimenting with basic income to come up with a common plan.
The municipalities of Utrecht, Tilburg, Groningen and Wageningen will jointly submit a ‘ uniformly ‘ plan ‘ before they can get permission for their experiments, including ‘ free money ‘. That has a spokesman of the Ministry of Social Affairs Wednesday evening told. This summer it became known that Utrecht, Tilburg, Groningen and Wageningen did want to set up experiments around social security payments.
According to the municipalities the current rules for the social security are too rigid and they work sometimes counter-productively. There would be too many re-integration and interview obligations with high penalties, such as suspension of the benefit. Customization is not possible and the municipality would have lost a lot of time with the controls.
For this reason, the four municipalities do want to give some of their social assistance receivers an unconditional social security payment – what they call a ‘ basic income ‘-, i.e. a monthly income of the Government without an obligation to take paid employment, to be involved in community service. Persons entitled to this assistance may also reserve their extra earnings. Tilburg, Utrecht, Groningen and Wageningen want to examine whether this group will become more active than others with the current, strict regime.
The four municipalities spoke with to PvdA-Jetta Klijnsma State Secretary of Social Affairs during a ‘ first ‘ conversation to get approval for the experiments. Admittedly the current “Participatiewet” (=participation law, to which the social assistance belongs) allow some ‘room for experiment’, but that seems not spacious enough for what Tilburg, Utrecht, Wageningen and Groningen are heading for. Klijnsma now wants that the four municipalities come up with a common, unambiguous proposal, because their ideas are still far apart. Tilburg for example is planning a four years experiment in cooperation with the University, while Utrecht goes out of a year. Utrecht also wants, in addition to providing a basic income to some social assistance receivers and to compare the results of it with the results in other groups in which they use positive incentives. One of this groups will for example be rewarded with a bonus if they (volunteer) work.
A follow-up appointment with Klijnsma is planned in the first half of November this year. Then they will try on the basis of a new proposal to come to an agreement about the possibly stretching of the experiment space in the Participatiewet. In the meantime there is much discussion about the basic income in the Netherlands. Proponents commend on the aim to give social assistance receivers an unconditional social security payment as a means to free the recipients of the restrictions and humiliations they have to suffer and think that this freedom will lead to creativity. Opponents, such as the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), warn that it will be prohibitive to give everyone a ‘basic income’ and thinks it will discourage the people who get it to be active.
Ria Cats, “Four municipalities have to make a uniform plan for ‘ free money ‘ “. Financieel Dagblad, September 23, 2015.
De Gelderlander, “State Secretary of Social Affairs ask for additional research welfare experiment Wageningen” De Gelderlander, September 27, 2015.
by Stanislas Jourdan | Oct 15, 2015 | News
The Finnish government has just taken a first step towards delivering on its promise to implement a basic income pilot during its term in office.
After committing itself to conducting a basic income pilot in Finland the Finnish government is putting words into action. Formed after the general election last Spring the new government of Finland led by the Centrist party announced in September the allocation of a grant to a group of researchers from the Finnish social security and pension department (KELA).
The group also includes researchers from the University of Tampere, the influential Institute for Economic Research and the independent think tank Tänk, which previously published its own proposal for a basic income pilot project. This working group is now in charge of designing parameters for the pilot project, which should be delivered by 2016.
Otto Lehto, President of BIEN-Finland told Basic Income News this week, “We welcome the creation of this working group and are happy that KELA, Tänk and researchers from the University of Tampere are involved in it. They are authoritative organisations with people that actually understand what basic income means.”
Strong and persistent popular support for basic income
KELA has already started to work on the topic of basic income with a series of articles and studies. In September, it conducted an opinion poll which showed 70% of Finns in favour of basic income, confirming the strong popular support witnessed in similar polls in 2002 and earlier this year. The poll also revealed that most people think a good level of basic income would be about 1000 euros a month.
The publication of KELA’s Annual Report provoked a debate in the Finnish Parliament about basic income, where even skeptics and opponents thought it would be a good idea to organise a pilot study.
This resonates with an editorial published on October 11 in the influential newspaper ‘Helsingin Sanomat’ which argued that “the basic income pilot study is a good idea” while carefully stressing the need for a pilot programme. The editorial also said that whatever difficulties basic income might have, it is important to study its effects, and that the Finnish welfare system is in desperate need of a complete overhaul.
The pilot should start in 2017
Despite a push by one member of the Center Party Jouni Ovaska, to start the pilot project by 2016, the two ministers responsible for the project, Hanna Mäntylä (True Finns party) and Anu Vehviläinen (Centre Party) stressed that the experiment should not be conducted hastily since nobody wants a badly executed study. The pilot program should therefore not start before 2017.
BIEN-Finland fully shares the government’s concerns. “A pilot project organised without sufficient planning and on a low budget would not be scientifically significant,” stressed Mr Lehto.
“The worst option would be a geographical study that takes place in one location only, since it would be susceptible to uncontrollable local variables. Ideally, we would want to study the effects of basic income on a wide variety of people in different circumstances and different locations. This means either having a proper randomized trial across the whole population, geographically dispersed across the whole country (as suggested by the Tänk/Sitra study last winter); or a regional pilot involving many different locations with different sociological, economic and demographic profiles.”
Mr Lehto concluded, “We put our hopes in the KELA-led team to produce a good plan that actually helps moves forward the discussion on basic income.”
Credit Picture © Finnish Parliament
by Josh Martin | Jul 15, 2015 | News
Following the declarations of support for a basic income guarantee by Mayor Don Iveson of Edmonton and Mayor Naheed Nenshi of Calgary, the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Campaign for a Basic Income Guarantee (C-BIG) has called on the provinces’ politicians to seize this political momentum for a basic income. All four political party leaders in PEI have gone on record in support of basic income, and C-BIG hopes to generate enough momentum for basic income to culminate in a pilot project in PEI.
For more information, see the following links:
Anne Wheatley, “Campaign calls on P.E.I. politicians to join Calgary and Edmonton mayors in backing basic income guarantee”, Campaign for a Basic Income Guarantee, 10 July 2015.
Roderick Benns, “Alberta’s big city mayors bring capacity crowd to their feet at national summit on poverty”, Leaders and Legacies, 7 May 2015.
Marie Burge, “P.E.I. ideal place to pilot basic income guarantee”, The Guardian, 10 April 2014.
by Stanislas Jourdan | Jul 9, 2015 | News
Announcements from Finland and the Netherlands on the launch of basic income pilots are making ripples across Europe. In France, the Southern Region of Aquitaine might well be the next place where experiments are conducted to assess the viability of basic income.
Last Monday, July 6th, the regional Council based in Bordeaux voted through a motion marking the start of a process towards running basic income pilots in the region.
Despite a heated debate before the vote, the motion proposed by Green Council member Martine Alcorta was passed unanimously. In fact, several political groups opposed the motion, but decided to abstain when it came to a vote (see the video of the plenary here).
The president of the Council, Alain Rousset in particular rejected the proposal, which he believes is “against the work ethic”. But in the end he also stated he “could not oppose generosity”.
The motion was obviously supported by the Greens, but also with enthusiasm by the radical left coalition “Aquitaine Région Citoyenne” and by one right-wing member and deputy mayor of the city of Bordeaux, who explained her position to the online newspaper Rue89:
« I have always been in favour of the thinking around basic income. Many people don’t get by despite the number of benefits and social assistance schemes. We have to simplify everything: both administrative procedures for citizens and the workload for social workers.
Basic income is not an incentive not to work. On the contrary, it reveals people’s capacities once freed from pressures. We have to launch new experiments with a new spirit. We need new proposals, new models from what currently exist, and to think of a new system. »
So far, the adopted motion only commits the Council to start a call for projects to assess the feasibility of basic income pilots in the region. Under french law, such pilots could only be conducted under the direction of a voluntary department (sub-sections of regions in France), with the agreement of the government. The region would only provide financial support.
The initiator of the motion suggests that the pilots should be based on a proposal drafted last March by BIEN’s Affiliate, the French Movement for Basic Income, to reform the existing means-tested minimum income in France, the “Active Solidarity Income” (RSA). Under this proposal, the RSA would be automatically distributed with no work requirement and along with a taxation system more friendly towards part-time workers.
The current system suffers from many flaws. It is complex, discriminatory, household-based, and moreover it discourages people from pursuing paid work – or encourages them to instead pursue undeclared work – because of its threshold effects. Because of this, the RSA is neglected by the very people who need it. The take-up of RSA is only just over 50% of those eligible.
The proposal being pushed forward is certainly not a perfectly unconditional basic income, but it would constitute a solid step in that direction.
“This is a unique and unprecedented decision in France,” said Green local representative Marc Morisset. The Green Party of France has officially supported basic income since November 2013. Its members have been increasingly active in the promotion of the idea. Last February, another Green regional council member in Rhone-Alpes made a similar proposal, but unsuccessfully.
After this historic vote, the next step will be to finance a feasibility study, find a voluntary department and locate possible areas for experiment.
