Cracked houses: the Senate rejects a text overhauling the compensation system

The text, carried by MP Sandrine Rousseau and adopted in spring 2023 by the National Assembly, was largely rejected in the wake of the senatorial majority, an alliance between the right and the centrists.

A position shared by the government, which almost definitively kills the chances of seeing this environmental initiative succeed.

“Rejecting this bill is prolonging the ordeal of the victims,” regretted environmentalist senator Ghislaine Senée, denouncing “a terrible missed opportunity for the Senate.”

The text attacks the compensation system for individuals who see their homes crack following repeated droughts, a situation worsened by climate change.

In France, 10,4 million individual houses are exposed to a medium or high risk of “clay shrinkage-swelling” (RGA).

Concretely, the text modifies the criteria for recognition of the state of natural disaster to increase the number of municipalities concerned under this phenomenon of movement of clayey soils.

Another measure that has attracted a lot of attention: freeing policyholders from the burden of proving that the loss suffered is linked to this phenomenon. It would then be up to the insurer to demonstrate that this is not the case.

“Far from being painless, this proposal creates for the system an additional annual cost estimated at 1 billion euros by the government. This billion euros is the policyholders who, collectively, will pay it each year,” warned the Minister of Relations with Parliament, Marie Lebec.

The rapporteur appointed by the Senate on this text, Christine Lavarde (Les Republicains group), went in the same direction by evoking "inopportune" measures and the "very significant risks that they pose to the functioning of the securities market. insurance".

The latter invited the government to take up another "broader" legislative "vector": a bill that it itself tabled in recent days to "ensure the balance of the disaster compensation system natural" and which will be debated in the fall.

The approach of the senatorial right was denounced on the left. “This undermines the legislative initiative of minority groups and breaks with the concept of senatorial democracy,” lamented communist Marie-Claude Varaillas.