Change social thresholds to “ transform a scrub into a garden », according to the words of the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire. In a report produced at the request of Bercy and submitted on Thursday February 15, five parliamentarians from the majority, led by the Renaissance deputy for Saône-et-Loire Louis Margueritte, recommend a review of the operation of the regulatory thresholds to which certain obligations are attached for companies. Three of the fourteen proposals relate to the functioning of these social thresholds, regularly denounced by employers as penalizing small businesses.
The report, which should feed into a draft law on simplification in the first half of the year, proposes for example to allow companies less than five years old and with less than fifty employees to define with them the application of certain provisions of the agreements of branch. It is also suggested that the obligations of the three main social thresholds of eleven, fifty and two hundred and fifty employees be reduced by “translating” of a level. And to harmonize the methods of calculating the workforce for the determination of the thresholds in question – these differ between the Social Security code and the commercial code. Other proposals in the report concern the deadlines for labor disputes, access to public procurement for SMEs, or the administration exceeding payment deadlines.
The proposals were immediately welcomed by the Minister of the Economy. “When I see the proposals made by our parliamentary friends on the thresholds, particularly on the threshold of fifty employees, I think they are right, the idea of raising the thresholds is a very good idea, he said during a press conference in Bercy on February 15 for the submission of the report. This means that we can allow you to grow without the threshold being an obstacle, we did this in the Pacte law [Plan d’action pour la croissance et la transformation des entreprises], I am completely ready for us to take this bill further. »
However, specifying that“we can perfectly change the regulatory thresholds without touching the tax thresholds, so that all this does not have a dizzying cost for [les] public finances “. In his eyes, the excess of standards “fuels the anger of entrepreneurs and farmers, and therefore fuels the extremes in Europe”.
“Complicated debate”
Opposing the “France of common sense” to her “hassles”the Head of State had already touched on the idea of modulating social thresholds, during the press conference on January 16, asking the government to “remove standards, reduce deadlines, make hiring even easier, increase all thresholds for triggering obligations”, without further details. Several legal obligations concerning social dialogue, profit sharing and even accounting apply to companies when they cross these thresholds.
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