Elisabeth Borne wished Friday in Salon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) "to reconnect with the spirit of the RMI" set up by Michel Rocard in 1988 to accompany in a more personalized and directive way towards employment people with the RSA. The idea of the RMI (Minimum Integration Income) was to "allow everyone to have enough to live on while being accompanied at the same time towards employment", in "an integration approach", but "we have lost sight of this objective a little", said the Prime Minister to the press.
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Allowances have taken up more and more space in the budgets of the departments to the detriment of support and integration into employment. What we want to do is reconnect with the spirit of the RMI and ensure that we do not leave beneficiaries of the RSA (Active Solidarity Income, editor's note) for years without support, "she said. The RMI was set up in 1988 by the government of the socialist Michel Rocard and replaced in 2009 by the RSA, which stands at 607 euros for a single person.
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A "win-win" approach
However, despite the decline in unemployment and labour shortages in many sectors, the number of RSA recipients has hardly decreased since 2017, to around 1.9 million. And only 40% of them are registered with Pôle emploi. This new support, tested in 18 departments, is part of the reform France Labour, which will replace Pôle emploi. It will be more personalised and will make it easier to implement sanctions for recipients who do not comply with their obligations.
The envisaged objective of 15 to 20 hours of activities per week, which does not appear in the law, will be "adapted" to everyone, said the Minister of Labour Olivier Dussopt, also present, in the face of the fears of associations fighting against poverty. "It's a win-win approach" for job seekers and companies, said Elisabeth Borne, in front of an audience of elected officials, companies and employment actors, including the presidents of the region Renaud Muselier and the department Martine Vassal.
After meeting former RSA recipients, she heard at the local Mission young beneficiaries of youth engagement contracts (CEJ), which she had set up when she was Minister of Labour and which inspired the "contract of engagement" of RSA recipients. More than 300,000 young people far from employment have signed a YEC since its launch in March 2022.
The Prime Minister had maintained her trip despite the knife attack the day before against several children in Annecy, where she immediately went Thursday. "We are following the situation very closely. The president is there, he will be at the side of the families. We are really still fully upset by what happened," she said.