Candidate of the Socialist Party in the presidential election, Anne Hidalgo had made an impression with her first announcement: the doubling of teachers’ salaries. Besides this emblematic wish, what would be her first measure if she is elected on April 24? An “emergency law” for young people.
“My first measure will concern questions relating to purchasing power and wages”, she announced a few months ago to Ouest France, explaining that she wanted to “open a very large interprofessional negotiation and by branch to allow employees in our country but also to those of the public service to raise the level of salaries which is very low”.
A “social question” which, according to her, is one of the main subjects of the presidential campaign, “with the inflation that is coming”, “with the difficulty of living from one’s work”. The socialist candidate had also put forward the question of the salary of women still “20% lower than that of men”, according to her words.
A youth minimum income
Another priority: the purchasing power of young people. If she is elected, Anne Hidalgo has indeed refined her speech, and wishes to address her “first measure after the election” to young people, to whom she promises “an emergency law”, in addition to the minimum youth income of 564 euros per month subject to resources and the endowment of 5,000 euros that it intends to offer to each Frenchman at the age of 18 for “finance professional and personal projects».
The candidate, who has held the post of mayor of Paris for more than 8 years, had estimated in the JDD at the beginning of April that “with inflation at 4.5 points and […] between the Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine”, “we cannot weigh [sur les jeunes] all the cost of the crises we are going through”.
Among the main principles of this law, it proposes “total free registration fees for all students”, who enroll in “public higher education”, and this, “from the start of the 2022 school year” and “without condition of resources”. Even if the state compensates. Student life contribution fees will also be exempt. Or “500 million euros per year”, according to her.
And while young people have suffered hard during the health crisis and sometimes even had difficulty feeding themselves, Anne Hidalgo also wants to “establish the meal at 1 euro in the Crous” and “revalue personalized housing aid by 10% ( APL) and scholarships on 1 October”.
New spending of up to 3 billion euros net per year, which it wants to finance “by widening the base for calculating the tax on large fortunes and by adding taxation on the” super profits “of multinationals” , while bringing back “all the money from tax optimization, which is similar to fraud, by reviewing all of these devices”.
Credited with around 2% of voting intentions for this presidential election, even though she was re-elected in Paris in 2020 with 48.5% of the vote, ahead of Rachida Dati (34.3%) and Agnès Buzyn (13%) , Anne Hidalgo announces a final boost for young people, already in place in the capital: “free daily transport”.
A measure that is therefore close to her heart and that she proposes to put in place from July 1, 2022 and for all young people under the age of 26. And the estimate does not even scare him: “2 billion euros in a full year”.