“We are going through an unprecedented energy crisis. We have exploding procurement costs. I’m still not going to pay €1,000 a month when I’m already struggling to sustain my business! It is downright scandalous. They understood nothing of business. Based in Nantes, this restaurant owner almost fell off his chair when last December he received an email from the Pays de la Loire regional council entitled “Recovery ready Resilience.” In this message, the business department of the community reminds him that the boss for the needs of his business had taken out a loan of €10,000 from the region in the middle of the covid crisis in 2020 and that he was obliged to repay half last summer. Failure to pay therefore encourages him to settle his debt, while offering him a payment option for part of 2023. And sends him back to the tax authorities if his difficulties are insurmountable.
We’re not asking them for freebies, we’re asking them to help us
“They do not integrate that for two years there has been an upheaval and that we cannot find a normal rhythm? asks the entrepreneur. “If I had returned to pre-covid conditions, there was no problem, I would have reimbursed them. That they offer us to pay in two years. There they tell us that we have to deal with the taxes. We pray not them about freebies, we’re asking them to help us.”
This horror confirms it. The recurrence of crises hurts some companies. In the Pays de la Loire, this entrepreneur is not the only one. Of the 1,926 companies that took out a Resilience loan in 2020, for a total frame of €8.4 million, 385 are still in litigation today. It is a residue to be collected of €2.2 million for the community, specifies Franck Louvrier, vice-president of the Pays de la Loire Regional Council and president of the Business Commission. An elected representative who estimates that 267 of these companies are in a situation of maximum surveillance and may be affected by a procedure of the type of termination or liquidation.
If Franck Louvrier hears the dismay of some of these business leaders at these reports of recovery, he nevertheless believes that society has been patient. “The e-mail sent in December is not the first. They received a reminder letter in September and an opening letter in October. It is therefore normal that the December notification is a bit drier than the previous ones. It is normal that by the fourth reminder letter we can demand accountability. The goal is not to handicap companies. It is to accompany them. We are tailor-made,” pleads the elected representative, who is also the mayor of La Baule-Escoublac.
Extra time for 60 companies in Brittany
In the Pays de la Loire, the region is directly responsible for collection. A different strategy than the one implemented by Brittany with her Covid Resistance Fund. On the other side of the border, management has indeed been entrusted to Bpifrance, which oversees the repayment of loans. Of the 743 cases opened between April and September 2020, for a total amount of €9.3 million, 60 requested an additional period of one year. Either a reimbursement start that can be postponed until March 2024. “We have acted flexibly and therefore opened up the possibility of extending by one year for those who could not repay within the framework of the fixed schedule”, the regional council informs regarding. Brittany.
