Jacques Serais / Photo credits: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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9:50 a.m., April 3, 2024
The idea of reforming unemployment insurance sows division within the presidential camp. The idea put forward by the head of government Gabriel Attal should make it possible to continue to reduce the unemployment rate in France and reduce the duration of compensation. But the left wing of the macronie does not see it that way.
The unemployment insurance reform sows discord among the majority. The left wing of the macronie is worried to see the executive reduce by several months the duration of compensation for the unemployed, currently set at 18 months. After the immigration law, this reform project could once again divide the presidential camp. Divisions which thus show that the strategy of overcoming dear to Emmanuel Macron is not without limits.
A more global subject than a simple reduction in the duration of compensation
Because the flammable unemployment insurance issue is ready to burst into flames. The lieutenants of the left wing of the majority draw their matches and Yaël Braun-Pivet carries the flame. “Working on unemployment is much more global than simply saying that by reducing the duration of compensation, we are going to put people back on the job market,” attacks the President of the National Assembly head-on, former member of the Socialist Party.
And she’s not the only one. Sacha Houlié, elected Renaissance de la Vienne and president of the Law Commission, takes issue with the government’s project. Reducing the duration of compensation for job seekers is “not the right way” “while unemployment is no longer falling” believes this parliamentarian, also from the PS.
Deep divisions
The start of a fire that Gabriel Attal is trying to contain. “We are not attacking the unemployed, but a system which has resulted in mass unemployment” defends the Prime Minister in front of the deputies of the presidential camp in an Assembly room. On the way out, an elected official, convinced by the reform, rages against those they call “rebels”: “Let them all go to La France insoumise!”, says this early Macronist.
For the majority, reducing the deficit already has a price: that of division.