"We're on the verge of bankruptcy": Professionals and individuals demonstrate against late MaPrimeRénov' payments

Despite promises of state support, the malfunctions of MaPrimeRénov' are exhausting entrepreneurs and beneficiaries of this energy renovation aid, putting them in serious economic difficulty.

A rally is planned for Monday, May 12, in Paris in front of the National Housing Agency (ANAH), the state agency responsible for paying out MaPrimeRenov' funds. This program has already funded energy renovation work in nearly 2.5 million homes since 2020. But the individuals and business leaders who will be demonstrating are denouncing malfunctions in the payment of bonuses, especially in recent months.

The initiator of this gathering was Thierry Flak, the head of an energy renovation company: "We're on the verge of bankruptcy because I'm owed more than 800,000 euros," he complained, pointing the finger at the government.

This Val-de-Marne boss is particularly denouncing delays or refusals to pay bonuses. "I am a financial agent, we are progressing the work for clients and the State is supposed to pay me, but today, the payment deadlines are lunar ," he laments. "We are in a situation where we have had to separate from more than 14 employees when we were 25 until September 2024. We had an agency in Nice that we had to close in January. We have an agency in Cambrai that we closed in February and we are reducing costs to try to hold on."

The delays have lengthened in recent months, acknowledges the Anah, mainly due to the reinforced controls against fraud . They target businesses, and individuals like Cindy, 36. This Vosges resident has just received her bonus, after two years of proceedings. "For 8,550 euros, I wasn't going to give up ," says Cindy. "It was actually agonizing. We saw that we didn't have the budget to finish the house. We made a small top-up with the bank. We had to take a little money from our children's account and when we received the bonus, we reimbursed them."

Cindy called on Joyce Pitcher, a lawyer specializing in these cases. She has 2,500 pending, mostly businesses. She understands the inspections but points to a disorganization: "The resources implemented to carry out the inspections are totally insufficient. We can clearly see that the staff are not necessarily trained. We can see that several different people can go through a file. There is still a real organizational problem surrounding all of this." The National Housing Agency assures that it is currently doing everything possible to reduce delays.