Gabriel Attal wants to reopen the unemployment insurance project in order to further tighten the rules, after two controversial reforms in 2019 and 2023. The Prime Minister announced, this Wednesday, March 27, during 8 p.m. on TF1, a new reform on this subject “before the summer” so that it can come into force “in the fall”. “I asked the Minister of Labor Catherine Vautrin to prepare new negotiations” for “a real, more global reform” with the social partners, while the latter must make proposals on senior unemployment in the coming days.
This new reform could concern the duration of compensation, the working time necessary to benefit from unemployment, or even the level of compensation. The Prime Minister confirmed that this last avenue had his “preference”, while confirming that he wanted to act on the first lever by affirming that he wanted to reduce the duration of compensation “by several months”, without it falling below 12 months.
“Go below 3% public deficit” in 2027
While France’s public deficit finally reached 5.5% of GDP in 2023, the Prime Minister also confirmed “the objective of falling below 3% deficit in 2027”, while the rating agency Moody’s judged this Wednesday “improbable” the achievement of France’s budgetary objectives within the next three years.
To rebalance the budget, the Prime Minister once again rejected the prospect of increasing taxes “for French people who work, and who have worked all their lives”, or for businesses, “which finance the work of the French.”
No “dogma on the subject” of superprofits
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also affirmed that he “never (had) had a dogma on the subject” of superprofits, recalling that energy companies and biology laboratories had already been subject to a specific tax.
“But I have two red lines”, added the head of government: “not to increase taxes on the middle classes of French people who work or French people who have worked all their lives and who always earn a little too much to have aid but never enough to be able to get by properly on their own”, nor those “for what allows us to finance the work of the French”.
“Reductions in contributions which provide more incentive to increase” low salaries
Also during this interview, Gabriel Attal repeated that he wanted to “de-emphasize” France, “to review the system of reductions in contributions” so that this would encourage “more to increase” low wages.
“We have a system which means that, in fact, there is no longer much interest for anyone to increase employees who are on the minimum wage. The employer, it costs him very dearly, the employee on the minimum wage, it will in the end earn less,” justified the Prime Minister. “We must have reductions in contributions which provide more incentive for employees to increase their salary,” he insisted, indicating that he had entrusted a mission “to two economists who will make proposals to you in June on the subject”.
A “major initiative” on work accidents
Another subject discussed this Wednesday evening, that of “accidents at work”: the Prime Minister indicated that he wanted to launch “a major initiative” to “better prevent them and “improve the quality of life at work”.
“We have too many accidents at work in France, we have too many French people dying at work,” declared the head of government, referring in particular to the statistic of “two” deaths per day. To improve the situation, Gabriel Attal plans to “bring together all the partners, social partners, elected officials, parliamentarians so that there is a major initiative taken on this subject”.