Energy check: have you not received the aid even though you think you are eligible? A complaints counter will open… in July

A bit of patience. If you believe you are eligible for the energy check in 2024 but have not received the aid in question, you will be able to submit a complaint from July, the Ministry of the Economy announced on Monday. These households will be able to make “a request on a dedicated portal, which will be open from July to December”, according to Bercy.

Around 5.6 million beneficiaries were affected by the campaign to automatically send energy checks for the year 2024, which ended on April 25. Distributed since 2018, the energy check helps low-income households pay their energy bills (electricity, gas, heat, wood or oil heating, LPG) and certain energy renovation work.

Its annual amount varies between 48 euros and 277 euros, calculated according to the reference tax income and the composition of the household. For this last criterion, the administration usually based itself on housing tax declarations. However, the housing tax on main residences was abolished in 2023, which complicated the identification of potential eligible households. “This deletion no longer makes it possible to automatically establish a new list of beneficiaries of the energy check for 2024,” underlines Bercy in its press release.

At the start of the year, several family associations (CLCV, Afoc, Rural Families, Cnafal, UFC, Unaf) expressed their fears of seeing a million beneficiaries excluded from the system “even though they meet the criteria to obtain it “. “In order to combat fuel poverty, the government has decided to set up a portal to allow households who are eligible for the energy check based on their situation in 2022 (income and household composition), but were not in view of their situation in 2021, to request the energy check,” explains Bercy in a press release.

“This concerns, for example, young people entering working life (first-time filers), households who experienced a drop in income between 2021 and 2022 or households who had a birth in 2022,” added the ministry. The application form will be available on the website https://chequeenergie.gouv.fr/.