Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced Wednesday evening that he had asked his Minister of Labor Catherine Vautrin “to prepare new negotiations” on unemployment insurance, with among the options put forward a possible reduction in the duration of compensation. “I asked my Minister of Labor to prepare new negotiations, so that we can relaunch a discussion with the social partners around a real, more global reform of unemployment insurance,” he underlined.
“One of the options is to reduce this duration of compensation by several months” but “I do not think that it should go below twelve months”, while the duration is currently eighteen months as a general rule, declared Gabriel Attal on TF1.
“Let social workers work”
The head of government also mentioned the two other "tracks" for reforming unemployment insurance: namely touching on the minimum time one must have worked to benefit from unemployment - currently six months in the last two years - and the “unemployment benefit level”. This last “track” has “less (his) preference” but “we will let the social partners work”, he said.
Also read “Putting people to work”: the specter of the new tightening of the screw on unemployment insurance
“I want us to have the parameters of this reform in the summer so that it can come into force by the fall, as I committed to,” he added. “My objective is not to attack a particular individual or the unemployed, it is to move a system to further encourage people to return to work,” said the Prime Minister.
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