Beneficiaries, duration, controls… how Gabriel Attal plans to reduce the unemployment insurance rights of the French

Gabriel Attal interviendra au 20 H de TF1, ce mercredi. AFP POOL – LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL

Le Premier ministre devrait donner un sérieux tour de vis, animée par l’idée que le travail ne peut être moins rémunérateur que l’aide sociale. Il jouerait à la fois sur les bénéficiaires et la durée.

"I will give nothing to lazy people, cynics and extremes…" En 2017, with a little sentence that will be criticized for a long time, Emmanuel Macron made the value of work one of his fundamentals.

Since his arrival in Matignon, Gabriel Attal has taken over this totem. Alongside school and health, work has become his priority. "He thinks that it’s not possible that work pays less than assistantship. This is why we are going to move forward on unemployment insurance", his entourage assured us last week. The announcements are expected this Wednesday March 27 and the turn of the screw should be significant.

Duration of compensation, eligibility, checks…

The government plans to reduce the duration of compensation, that is to say the time during which one can receive unemployment compensation. This period has already gone from twenty-four to eighteen months, but we can further reduce it, the Prime Minister said a few weeks ago. The executive also looks closely at the duration of eligibility, that is to say the time you must have worked to be able to be compensated.

Another avenue is emerging: strengthening controls on people registered with France Travail, the new name of Pôle emploi. 600,000 checks were carried out in 2023 and 500,000 in 2022.

The government wants to increase the pace even further. "I set a goal : that we multiply annual inspections by three by the end of the five-year term", warned Gabriel Attal. Or 1.5 million in 2027, with particular attention to sectors in tension.

Full employment by the end of the five-year term ?

Gabriel Attal is organizing a major seminar on work this Wednesday March 27 in Matignon, to collect the ideas of his ministers on the subject and remind them of the objective: be at full employment by the end of the five-year term, i.e. around 5% unemployment compared to 7.4% today.

"However, with falling unemployment, we must seek out those who are very far from employment " explained last week a Renaissance deputy close to the Élysée. Which is working on a reform that would allow school dropouts to enter certain professional sectors without having to take an exam.

"Such measures allow us to resume our story on the fight against house arrest, explained this elected official , who added: Full employment is not just a statistic, it is a change in society. This means that we are no longer afraid for the future of our children. It can even lead people to change their behavior in terms of birth rates. And then, the drop in unemployment allows unions to negotiate from a position of strength. »

Macron wants to work harder

This is a way for the majority to clear the ground, because the criticisms are starting to emerge.

Some accuse the government of targeting the unemployed with the sole aim of filling budgetary gaps. "The social climate is rather peaceful in private companies. Be careful, therefore, not to add to the tensions that the country is going through: we need to know at what pace and how far we want to move forward in terms of the evolution of social law, declared the president of Medef, Patrick Martin, in Les Échos.

But the executive should remain deaf to these warnings. Emmanuel Macron believes that 2024 is the last useful year of his five-year term, so he intends to work harder. However, since 2014 he has been advocating for a reform of unemployment insurance.

At the time, then a young Minister of the Economy, he opposed the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine for whom a certain Gabriel Attal worked.< /p> I subscribe to read more