Register › Concepts › Essential provision
Essential provision
Twelve elements of provision furnished free at the point of use to every person, conditioned on nothing at all.
The list
Article 62(1) names twelve elements: food, drinking water, sanitation, housing, energy, healthcare, medicines, education, care, clothing, transport and access to communication. The list is in the Constitution, so the Assembly can only add to it by law.
Free at the point of use
Provision is furnished to every person in the territory, in the quantity and quality fixed as the minimum core under Article 41(5). Article 62(2) conditions it upon no contribution, conduct, status, document, debt or behaviour, which disposes of the whole apparatus of means tests, eligibility windows and proof of entitlement.
It cannot be switched off
Interruption or reduction as a sanction, as a means of enforcement, or in consequence of a shortfall in allocation is prohibited by Article 62(3). Priority inside the plan is secured by Article 26(4), so a shortage falls on everything else first. A resident who is being disciplined, prosecuted, evicted from a post or removed from a commune keeps every element on the list throughout.
What sits above the list
General provision under Article 107 covers furniture, tools, bicycles, personal computing and communication devices, books, instruments, canteen meals, holiday accommodation and more. Organic law maintains that catalogue and the plan extends it as production permits. Allocation follows need registered under Article 63, and Article 113 governs the queue when the catalogue falls short of the register. Communal libraries of tools, equipment and vehicles lend before anything is allocated personally.
The residual unit changes none of this
Where a residual unit of account is issued under Article 7(5), it is equal, personal, expiring and untransferable, and Article 62(5) states that its issue leaves the free character of essential provision untouched. Only minor discretionary goods can be obtained with the unit.
Why the word is provision
A benefit is a payment made to a person who qualifies, which implies a test, an administrator applying it and a class of people who fail it. Provision arrives because a person is present. The duty to contribute under Article 70 runs alongside it and is presumed of everyone, and Article 62(2) keeps the two apart: refusing a task reduces nothing.