Women MPs want to increase insurance premiums to address effects of droughts

Written by majority MP Sandra Marsaud and ecologist Sandrine Rousseau, the report aims to improve insurance coverage of the risk of shrinkage-swelling of clay, which threatens more than one in two houses in France.

Clay soils settle during droughts and swell with humidity, a phenomenon that can cause cracks to appear on buildings with shallow foundations, typically individual houses, resulting in very costly work.

Of the 19,4 million houses in France, 10,1 are exposed to clay risk, including 3,1 million highly.

The regions most at risk are located in a "clayey crescent" going from the Var to the Centre-Val de Loire via the Garonne basin; Lorraine and a large part of Ile-de-France are also concerned.

The rapporteurs note that droughts, the frequency and intensity of which are getting worse with global warming, are costing insurance companies more and more: 1 billion euros per year since 2016, compared to 500 million on average between 2000 and 2015 .

However, nearly three quarters of the victims are not compensated, either for lack of a decree of natural disaster taken in their municipality, or because their insurance did not establish a link between the drought and the cracks.

The MEPs are therefore proposing several measures aimed at making more households eligible for compensation.

The additional cost of these measures would be financed, they wish, by increasing the "surcharge" of insurance allocated to the national system of compensation for natural disasters. This premium would in future be automatically revalued according to what the disasters cost in previous years.

This measure would bring in some 700 million euros and would cost "less than 10 euros per insured" for individuals, according to the deputies.

They also recommend increasing the rest to be paid for work for the insured, by allowing the State to fill it in certain cases, for example to help low-income households.

They also want to make builders pay for cracks that appear within 10 years of building the houses.