Spring 2017. Candidate Emmanuel Macron is campaigning to be elected President of the Republic and the unemployment rate is around 9% of the active population. To bring it down, François Hollande’s former minister of the economy then advocated “liberate, protect”a slogan inspired by the Danish “flexicurity” model.
The aim is to “flexible” the labor market but also to provide security for employees, with an extensive and effective social protection system. Emmanuel Macron announces his labor law, facilitating layoffs, promises to open unemployment insurance to those who have resigned and to initiate systemic pension reform.
Autumn 2023. After a pension reform having pushed back the legal starting age from 62 to 64, Emmanuel Macron, re-elected in 2022, gives the impression of always looking for a direction. The objective of reaching full employment – around 5% unemployment – by 2027 is hammered home everywhere. But the path to get there is strewn with pitfalls. After a continuous decline for six years, it is starting to rise again, to 7.4% today, and economists even anticipate an increase of up to 8% within one or two years. The Head of State therefore urged everyone to continue on the path of reforms. ” Wake up ! We haven’t arrived” to full employment, he launched on November 21, at the Elysée.
For the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, the culprit is obvious. “Something is wrong with the French social model” and the latter must, according to him, become “less attractive for those who do not work”. He suggested a shock measure which would, according to him, contribute to achieving full employment: lowering the duration of compensation for unemployed people over 55 to align it with that of others.
Other avenues would be in the executive’s pipeline. Matignon would thus intend to reform the system of conventional terminations, as revealed La Tribune Sunday, November 26. Far from the original macronism, therefore, which planned to open unemployment insurance rights to those who resigned.
Doubts arise in part of Macronie
“By displaying the objective of full employment, I find that Emmanuel Macron returns to his initial matrix, analyzes Brice Teinturier, deputy general director of the Ipsos polling institute. On the other hand, once this objective was established, it was very quickly accompanied by measures and announcements to toughen the social model and push for greater flexibility, without there being any accompanying measures on the security. » As if of the two legs – the liberal and the social – of the model only the first remained.
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