Lne of the objectives of the new unemployment insurance law is to make compensation “counter-cyclical” – that is, to vary the level of compensation inversely to the state of the labor market. employment – at the risk of building a new gas plant. But, at the same time, projects that would allow significant savings to be made remain dormant. For example, the unemployment insurance scheme for cross-border commuters.
France has nearly half a million residents who work with our neighbours, mainly those on the eastern and northern borders. France is bound to these countries by a European multilateral convention: the foreign employer of a French cross-border resident pays the contributions in his country; this cross-border worker contributes to the unemployment insurance scheme of the country of employment. But if he loses his job, then he depends on the French insurance scheme.
For example, if Marie, a resident of Annemasse, loses her job in Geneva, it is the Pôle emploi agency in Annemasse that will manage her and pay her unemployment insurance on the basis of the income she received in Switzerland, and this even if Marie is a Swiss citizen. The Swiss funds only reimburse a maximum of five months of compensation (only three if she has worked less than twelve months), while the duration of compensation for dismissed cross-border workers is much longer. As there is no cross-border transmission of hiring information, Marie may even forget to notify Pôle Emploi that she has found a job in Switzerland and continue to collect French unemployment insurance for a time.
With ever more French cross-border workers leaving to respond to the labor shortages of our neighbours, but also Swiss households settling in France to escape the price of land in their country, France paid, in 2020, 1, 1 billion euros in unemployment benefits for cross-border workers and barely recovered 200 million from foreign funds. An abyssal hole, three quarters of which with Switzerland, which should be reduced this year, but still around 600 million euros. With this system, French companies effectively subsidize foreign employers. And since the benefits paid to cross-border workers are proportional to their wages, French employers in border areas are struggling to convince these unemployed workers to take up vacant jobs. This phenomenon is more marked at the Swiss border: the average monthly benefit of compensated cross-border commuters is approximately 2,700 euros, while the average allowance in France is 1,200 euros.
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