An initiative born of real situations
The path that led to Federacta began in 2009, when Brigitte Vitale started a mutual support initiative addressing the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs and self-employed people. The Aide Entreprise blog provided a way to collect personal accounts and connect people. The need soon extended beyond economic concerns: professional difficulties can also affect family life, housing, health and the ability to assert one’s rights.
The initiative took an associative form with Aide Entreprise in 2015. Its statutes, adopted on 5 January, provide for voluntary assistance, guidance towards appropriate contacts and preventive action. The Mulhouse register of associations issued a receipt on 17 April 2015. These documents gave a formal framework to an initiative that had begun several years earlier.
Observing difficulties and making them understandable
From 2016, the work continued through OSDEI, an observatory run by Aide Entreprise. The aim was to move beyond collecting personal accounts, understand recurring difficulties and prepare case files that could support dialogue with professionals and institutions. Initiatives launched in 2018 opened a new stage in this work.
OSDEI report number 2019/0401, a preserved version of which is dated January 2020, describes a study of around thirty case files. The situations were examined and accompanied by legal summaries. They raised practical questions: understanding proceedings, finding relevant documents, identifying a contact and being able to organise a defence. These analyses informed the association’s proposals for support, mediation and training.
Bringing these findings into institutional dialogue
Exchanges with Sylvain Waserman took the form of dialogue on insolvency proceedings. In 2021, a milestone was documented in the work of the French National Assembly: information report number 4390, tabled on 21 July, mentions Aide Entreprise OSDEI and includes Brigitte Vitale in its list of people heard. These concerns thus found a place in parliamentary debate. A preserved note also records a dialogue meeting on 4 May 2022.
Organising case files and continuity of support
These years of work highlighted a need: information must be understandable, organised and passed on to the right professionals. Protocole Vitale® forms part of this search for a method. Already named in legal summaries from March–April 2021, it subsequently continued to develop within the CNDD framework.
The founding statutes of the Conseil National des Débiteurs are dated 6 December 2021. The process of establishing the organisation continued until June 2022, following this first constitutive stage. CNDD pursues the representation and organisation of the people concerned. It remains distinct from Aide Entreprise, Protocole Vitale® and Federacta.
Giving action the resources it needs
The initiatives reported for 2023 and 2024 highlight another difficulty: an organised case file and a legal analysis do not, by themselves, fund the necessary professional interventions. Voluntary work needs support, available expertise and suitable resources. This experience led to considering support, professional responsibilities and funding together.
Federacta takes this reflection further. At this stage, it is a collective intended to bring together those contributing to the operation and development of Protocole Vitale®. The digital platform under construction is intended to support the useful circulation of information and continuity of support. Each project will need to identify its responsible organisation, partners, necessary rights and resources.
Testing resources with other countries
The European dimension responds to a need for comparison and learning: comparing practices, understanding what depends on national frameworks and checking what can be shared. It requires preserving responsibilities, confidentiality and each country’s rules. The proposed starting point is cooperation between France and Italy, built around actions whose usefulness can be assessed locally.
Federacta proposes to start with France–Italy cooperation to develop and test the resources needed for better continuity of support and effective access to rights. This cooperation will make it possible to compare experiences, adapt resources to national frameworks and measure their usefulness. Gradually opening it to other countries will seek to enrich this work and assess its transferability. The European ambition will thus translate into verifiable improvements in local communities.