The president of the French Business Movement (Medef) Patrick Martin during a conference at the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) in Paris, October 16, 2023 (POOL/AFP/Archives/Miguel MEDINA)
The president of Medef Patrick Martin estimated on Tuesday that “tightening the unemployment compensation rules will not be enough” to achieve full employment, pleading instead for maintaining the supply-side policy.
The reform of unemployment insurance “is part of the response”, estimated Mr. Martin on BFM Business, agreeing that a tightening of compensation rules “will probably bring 100,000 to 150,000 unemployed people back to work”. But for him, “that won’t be enough.”
He seemed to warn against too drastic measures, observing “that as it stands, the social climate, the dialogue between social partners, are rather peaceful: this is important in a fairly flammable, irritable and fractured country, to preserve this good quality of dialogue,” he said. For him, “the priority is for the supply policy to materialize.”
France must “gain in competitiveness”, insisted the president of Medef, suggesting in particular to “reallocate social security contributions still to this day abusively borne by companies and employees”. He “believes he knows” that this is “the main angle on which the government wants to work”.
Concerning salaries, Mr. Martin estimated “that in 2024 companies will pay increases higher than what we imagine to be inflation over the year”.
While the OECD predicted on Tuesday growth of 0.6% of French GDP in 2024, against 1.4% still officially envisaged by the government, Mr. Martin thinks that we will be “around one point”, with “a restart” in the second half.
He wants Europe to “deploy much faster” its economic support plans, with “streamlined procedures”.
On the fight against global warming, he wanted “timetables, visibility and funding, ideally self-financing”. “But the European Union must be coherent and say ‘this is how together we are going to succeed in financing the decarbonization objectives’,” he said.
He denounced the payment delays to local authority companies, particularly overseas “where we sometimes have delays of more than a year”. He suggested doing “name and shame”, that is to say publicly quoting them, “that would calm some people”.
Concerning the EU-Mercosur agreement, he reiterated his wish for the development of trade with South America, accompanied, however, by the countries concerned respecting ecological and social conditions, but considered that the debate on this matter had become “passionate , irrational and politicized.
© 2024 AFP
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