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In this article the author analyses the significance of the “FUS” (“Social emergency fund”) facilities, as well as their consequences for changes in the institutional partnership for social aid arising from decentralisation, and based on the example of the Nord administrative “département”. The “FUS” has often been seen as a “return” by the central State, but it is also one of the most advanced forms of localised social action with aid distributed as closely as possible to need. The definition of emergency is elaborated via local jurisprudence which fails to decide between its two dimensions: on the one hand the “emergency” in the situation of applicants; and on the other the “emergency” in the management of resources. These different dimensions highlight any analysis made of the consequences, always double-sided, for the “FUS” of the transformed institutional system for social aid. The arrangements have pointed to possible reshapings in the division of skills between the partners in decentralisation – but they have also underlined the partners’ opposed interests, logics, interventions and/or social practises.