Shake… without steering. Gabriel Attal is out of the woods on unemployment insurance. There will indeed be a new reform. “The objective is full employment” reminded the Prime Minister on the TF 1 television news, insisting on the need to tighten the screw on unemployment compensation to “further encourage a return to employment”. “The financial context has changed” and “the system remains out of step
despite two reforms in 2019 and 2023,” argues one of his advisors.
If there is an urgent need to act, the timetable announced by the Prime Minister will allow time for discussions. “I am attached to dialogue,” he repeated. Contrary to the radical suggestion of the Minister of the Economy to take control, the social partners who manage unemployment insurance (via Unédic) will continue to be in charge. “I asked my Minister of Labor to prepare new negotiations,” said the host of Matignon.
“Reduce the duration of compensation by several months”
A framework letter should be sent at the end of April. It is up to the social partners to move the lines “by the summer”, specified the Prime Minister. With levers set in advance: “One of the parameters could be to reduce the duration of compensation by several months (from 18 months today), but not below 12 months,” said Gabriel Attal. Another scenario, tightening the conditions for benefiting from an allowance. Today, you must have worked six months over the last two years. “Here too, we can imagine increasing the required working time or reducing the reference duration,” he sketches.
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Last avenue mentioned, that of the level of compensation, by reviewing the parameters of the degression (30% less after seven months) in force for the highest salaries since 2021. “That is less my preference,” slips Attal. What if the social partners were unable to reach an agreement at the end of the set deadline, a fairly likely scenario according to the unions' confidences? The government will then take control again, within an incompressible deadline which postpones the fifth reform of its kind under the Macron era to the fall at best.
A “budgetary reform” for the unions
The method and the deadlines will undoubtedly succeed in calming, in the short term, the employers and especially the unions who already have weapons at their feet against what it describes as “budgetary reform”. The Prime Minister confirmed it, they are assured of being able to complete the negotiations on seniors (on April 8). But also those on the compensation channels for those over 55 (on April 10), an amendment expected by the government to finalize the new unemployment insurance agreement signed in November 2023 and whose implementation has been postponed.
This involves pushing back by two years (in line with the pension reform) all the age limits for senior beneficiaries which open up a longer duration of compensation: the duration is currently 22.5 months when you are elderly from 53 to 54 years and 27 months for those aged 55 or over, compared to 18 months for all others. “If they respect this framework, we will give our approval to the new unemployment insurance agreement. It will apply as agreed on July 1,” says Matignon. While waiting for the new rules to take over…