Since his arrival at Matignon, Gabriel Attal has made him one of his markers. He repeats it like a mantra. “Work must always pay better than inactivity”, asserts the Prime Minister. This short phrase in the form of a slogan was pronounced during his general policy declaration to the National Assembly on January 30, then to the employees of a metallurgy company – Numalliance – during a trip in the Vosges, on 1er March. In his mind, it’s about making “our more efficient and less costly social model”, in a context of budgetary savings. The head of government also intends to send a message to the middle classes, “these French people in the middle, who earn a little too much to receive aid”but not enough ” to be comfortable “.
This concern was to constitute one of the themes of the seminar, organized on Wednesday March 27 at the Matignon hotel in the presence of most of the ministers. Initially, this meeting was intended to discuss – among other things – the results of a negotiation between social partners, which should have ended the day before. But the unions and employers have decided to extend their discussions until April 8 “for a new pact for life at work” (employment of seniors, prevention of “professional attrition”, etc.). However, it was not excluded that Mr. Attal would make announcements in connection with these talks, Wednesday evening, during the television news on TF1. For several months, the executive has been communicating insistently on the project of a new reform of unemployment insurance, which would result, once again, in a tightening of the rules by shortening the duration of compensation – in particular at the expense seniors.
The Prime Minister’s leitmotif refers to old issues, as recalled by Yannick L’Horty, professor of economics at Gustave-Eiffel University. “In the past, it may have happened that unemployed people received benefits whose amount was temporarily higher than what they would have received if they had returned to a job”he says. “Before the change in the method of calculating compensation, decided in 2019, around one in five beneficiaries earned a little more by being unemployed than by being employed”adds Bruno Coquet, economist associated with the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE).
In principle, such situations are undesirable, because “it is essential that redistribution policies and our social protection system are designed so that there is always a gain in returning to an activity”continues Stéphane Carcillo, professor at Sciences Po Paris: “Otherwise, it would mean that the welfare state is disincentivizing people to work. »
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