Social security and autoentrepreneurs

I'm one step closer to getting a proper secu sociale number - the one they sent me previously was a temporary one, but I can apparently still use this to claim back my healthcare costs. I now need to send the RSI a copy of my full birth certificate and a certified translation, and they'll start the process of allocating me a proper one. They didn't, of course, tell me this until I went in there this morning to query my odd secu number. But they did tell me in the end, so success! We've got to get the birth certificates translated for the wedding, anyway, so it's not even an extra cost.

I haven't, though, seen anything that sets out how the autoentrepreneur and social security system work for foreigners. So I thought I might write down for future reference and Google indexing the steps I've gone through. (Please do comment if your path differs, it would be interesting to see how much this varies by location in France!)

This assumes you are an EU citizen living in France, that you're not otherwise covered by a secu sociale system and that you're not otherwise employed.

1. Register as an auto-entrepreneur at http://www.lautoentrepreneur.fr/. From the date you register, you are entitled to full social security cover (and are also liable for social security contributions, depending on your income.)

2. Wait a while. The RSI should send you a Certificat d'Inscription au Repertoire des Entreprises et des Etablissements (SIRENE) . This will have your SIRET number on it, which is proof that you are a properly registered company for places that require such proof. It took them about a week to send me mine, I was pleasantly surprised.

3. Wait some more time. Eventually, they will send you a request for information on how much you've earnt, and thus how much you owe in social security contributions. This letter should contain your numero de securite sociale. Congratulations! However, note that this number is probably filled with 000s. This indicates that the number is only temporary. To get a permanent one, you apparently have to send a copy of your full birth certificate, plus a copy of a certified translation to your local RSI offices. They will forward these to INSEE in Nantes for you, who will allocate you a permenant secu sociale number that remains with you until you die. (Or possibly until you leave France. Who knows?)

4. You should, at this point, also receive a letter from the mutuelle that you chose as part of the auto-entrepreneur sign-up process. This will have a numero de immatriculation on it, which should match the temporary social security number you have been given. It is to these people that you will send any feuilles de soins you are issued (along with a RIB, so they can repay you), until they give you a carte vitale. You also send them the completed declaration de choix de medecin traitant. The mutuelle you chose during the sign-up process is not (necessarily) the same as the mutuelle you have for your normal health insurance (which is optional). For auo-entrepreneurs, the RSI has sub-contracted, essentially, the admin work for processing healthcare repayments to a series of mutuelles - you choose one you'd like to work with, and they replace the CPAM for auto-entrepreneurs.

Simple, really, isn't it? Of course, it's taken 5 months to get to this point. And god only knows how long it will take to get the reimbursements and the proper social security number. But at least I have clear instructions and contact addresses, and the direct phone number of a very helpful RSI employee, who is clearly new and thus hasn't become utterly jaded and hating-of-humanity yet. I give her a week, but I'm glad I caught her early on!

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A quick explanation of Parliamentary government

Following on from Heidemarie's comment on my last post, my answer started getting too long for a comment. Hence this post.

Heidemarie – (8 May 2010 23:40)
No matter how many times Parliamentary government is explained to me, I just don't get it.

To be fair, this is hardly normal Parliamentary government. Normal Parliamentary government is really simple. To wit:

The Prime Minister, as part of the vestiges of the Royal Prerogative, decides when to call a General Election. This must be within 5 years of the last one, though there is no formal minimum time. In practice, if a Prime Minister wants to call an election every 6 months, permission will likely be refused. It costs a lot to run an election, anyway, so no political party would be very happy with overly frequent elections. The Prime Minister must give at least 17 working days notice of the election date, to allow the other parties time to campaign.

The country (including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) is divided into constituencies, with roughly equal populations (more or less). This time there are 650 of them. (The number varies slightly, as they adjust boundaries to take into account changes in population based on the last census.) These are separate from the constituencies - and elections - held for the various national assemblies and governments that exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Each constituency elects a Member of Parliament (MP). Each of the main 3 parties (the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats) and a number of smaller parties (the British National Party, the Green, independant candidates, usually standing on local issues like hospital closures) put up a candidate and The People vote, between 7 in the morning and 10 at night on the day selected by the Prime Minister as polling day.

Once The People have voted, the votes are counted, usually overnight that night. There's a bit of a race to be the first constituency to declare, and it's usually Sunderland. The winner of each constituency is the person who got the most votes, and they become the MP. Each MP gets one seat in the House of Commons.

Usually what happens next is that the leader of the party with the most MPs becomes Prime Minister, and there's a whole rigamarole around the outgoing Prime Minister going to see the Queen and resigning, and the incoming person going to see the Queen to be appointed. (Unless the incumbent wins, of course - but then the PM still goes to see the Queen, I think, to be formally invited to stay PM.) This has almost always been the leader of one of the two main parties (the Conservatives and the Labour Party, since the inter-war period.) Different rules applied during the Second World War, I think, though I'm not sure quite what they were...

This time, no one political party has won an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons, which is rare, to say the least. Coalition government is not common in the UK Parliament, which is why there's a fuss about it. The two parties that got the bigger share of the seats in the House were the Labour Party and the Conservative Party (though Labour didn't actually get that many more votes than the Lib Dems, but that's one of the quirkes of our First Past the Post election system...) - they are now each trying to persuade the Liberal Democrats to support them, which would give the Tories (the Conservatives) an easy majority in the House, and would give the Labour party much more support - they'd still have to get some support from other minor parties, though, since the Lib Dems alone wouldn't give them a majority.

This reason it's a problem that no party has a majority is because of the way Bills are passed in the UK. If a political party has a majority of seats - if they can out-vote all the other parties joined together - they can pass the legislation they set out in their manifesto (these are known as "Manifesto Commitments" oddly enough), because - assuming their own MPs remain loyal to the party, and there's a whole system designed to ensure this - all the other MPs can't stop legislation passing by out-voting it, no matter how much they disagree with it.

If a party has a very small majority, they can have trouble passing Bills, particularly if the leader of the party is unpopular with his MPs. (John Major in the first half of the 1990s, for instance.) Even if the other parties put together can't out-vote all the Government MPs, not all Government MPs will necessarily vote the Government line. There are varying amounts of pressure and carrots dangled to ensure compliance, but on some issues, there are rebellions of MPs, where they vote against the Government, even if it's their own party. If there's a very small Government majority in the House of Commons, these rebels can tip the balance the other way and defeat Government legislation. Big rebellions can defeat even healthy majorities, though it doesn't tend to happen nearly as much.

I'm going to stop rambling for a bit. If you have any questions about any of the above, or anything I've missed out - or if I've got anything wrong - do give me a shout in the comments...

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