Out of the 11,452 salary attachment orders over the last 12 months, a total of €35,376.95 was withheld on reimbursements by the national health agency (CNS). This represented a higher amount than for 2020, where 23 out of 9,908 such cases were taken from CNS payments for a total of €29,707.24. Answering a parliamentary question by deputy Marc Goergen (Pirate partéi), Schneider explained that it was legal and a last resort when a debt had to be settled. 

Goergen, , had argued that the procedure seemed to not align with the aims of the CNS and worried that aiming for this repayment might discourage citizens from getting the medical treatments they require. 

According to Schneider, the procedure remains a last resort, and was only used at the end of a longer recovery procedure. He added that “the settlement, statement of account, warning, warning of order” kept the taxpayer informed of their situation. 

In addition, this withholding on CNS payments is only applied when the taxpayer is a CNS employee, when the CNS compensates the taxpayer instead of the employer--for instance, in cases of an incapacity to work--or when the person is a free-working doctor who pays CNS invoices through the third-party payer system. 

While these conditions justify a salary attachment on CNS reimbursements, the tax administration cannot see, when receiving the payments, whether the income came from a salary, a reimbursement or a compensation. Though Schneider did not say whether this procedure would eventually be cut, he explained that the same thresholds of payments were applicable as for normal wage withholdings.