One of the main employers’ unions in the hotel and catering industry, the GHR, spoke out on Wednesday November 13 against a proposed law aimed at perpetuating the use of meal vouchers to do all your shopping in supermarkets, rather than extend it for one year. Examined Wednesday in the Assembly’s Economic Affairs Committee, the bill, adopted by 19 votes to 18, will be debated next Tuesday in the hemicycle, while the exemption allowing the purchase of products that are not directly consumable (flour, pasta , rice, meat, etc.) with meal vouchers ends at the end of December.
If the initial purpose of the text was to extend this exemption for one year, an amendment from the former Minister for Tourism and Consumer Affairs Olivia Grégoire proposing to perpetuate this measure without time limit was adopted. It also provides for a decree to specify the products that will be impossible to purchase via a meal voucher.
In sometimes tense discussions, rapporteur Anne-Laure Blin (Republican Right) opposed this measure, believing that it was necessary to confine itself to the one-year extension, and consider a more global overhaul of the meal voucher system. . Olivia Grégoire retorted that its adoption in no way prevented a “global reform” subsequently in Parliament on the supervision of its use, and assured that it would be a “force of proposal” in the hemicycle for sanctions against large stores which do not respect the bans. Sustainability before a more global reform was also defended by Hadrien Clouet (LFI), who called for establishing a “maximum commission rate” to help restaurateurs, and for excluding “Uberized platforms” from the meal voucher system.
Deputies on the right were concerned that a perpetuation in the Assembly would be rejected in the Senate, and that the parliamentary shuttle could not succeed before the end of December to renew the exemption allowing the purchase of products that are not directly consumable.
“The meal voucher becomes a food voucher”
“The adoption of this amendment is a scandal. The meal voucher becomes a food voucher, it definitively loses its purpose. Olivia Grégoire has just killed the meal voucher with the support of the NFP deputies”, got carried away in a press release Catherine Quérard, president of the employers’ union of restaurateurs GHR. According to the GHR, the share of receipts from meal vouchers in catering has decreased over the past two years, while that spent in mass distribution has increased from 22.4% at the end of 2022 to 30.1% in mid-2024. Thierry Marx, head of the other organization in the sector, Umih, had already spoken out in mid-October against the extension of the exemption, which he described as a “scandal”.
“More than 60% of employees now regularly bring their meals for lunch at their workplace”, argues the text accompanying the amendment, “changes in habit in the way of eating meals during the lunch break, favoring home-made meals taken to the workplace. The text adopted in committee also provides for the submission of a parliamentary report to the government proposing “structural reforms of meal vouchers”, within six months after the promulgation of the law.