The duration of the compensation, “senior employment bonus”… Gabriel Attal elaborated on the tightening of social security regulations in an interview in La Tribune Sunday.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal presented in La Tribune Sunday the main measures that will be taken to reform unemployment insurance, with stricter conditions for access to compensation and a shortened duration of compensation. These measures, which were presented this week to the social partners, should generate 3.6 billion euros in savings, according to the director, who hopes that thanks to them 90,000 additional people will be employed.
Opening of rights
Currently, to qualify for entitlements you must have worked for six months within the last 24 months, which is the attachment reference period. From 1 December you must have worked eight months over a reference period of just 20 months. Unédic, which did not assess the impact of the hypothesis presented by the government, calculated that if this attachment criterion had been raised to 12 months, the savings would have been 2.3 billion. A reduction of the reference period from 24 to 18 months would have made it possible to achieve savings of between 5.1 billion and 7.5 billion euros.
Duration of compensation
The maximum duration of the allowance is reduced from 18 to 15 months for persons under 57 years of age “under the current conditions”that is, if unemployment continues to develop within a range between 6.5% to 9% of the active population.
Seniors
Currently, employees aged 53 and 54 can be compensated for up to 22.5 months, and people aged 55 and over for up to 27 months. The first level will disappear, and the benefit of longer compensation will be reserved for unemployed people aged 57 and over. Gabriel Attal also said he would “the proposal from the social partners to create a Senior fixed contract be studied” and will ask Labor Minister Catherine Vautrin “to start negotiations after the summer on a legal text before the end of the year”.
Accumulated salary – allowance
To encourage unemployed seniors to return to work, the government is setting up a “Senior Hiring Bonus” to support the return to employment: it will make it possible to supplement a year with a lower salary than the previous one. This supplement paid by the unemployment fund will make it possible to compensate for a lack of salary up to 3,000 euros. The costs of this measure would be offset by a cap on the system to maintain the rights of the unemployed close to retirement, noted François Hommeril of the CFE-CGC, who pointed out that this would penalize managers.
Monthly payment
Instead of being calculated based on the number of days in the month (between 28 and 31), the daily allowance paid must henceforth be the same every month for an unemployed person who has not worked during the period, on a 30-day basis. It will cause unemployed people who have not worked for a whole year to lose five to six days’ compensation.
Modulation
According to the principle of “countercyclicality”, which has been in force since February 2023, the duration of unemployment benefits is reduced by 25% when the unemployment rate remains below 9%. This rate is currently 7.5%. This graduation will be reinforced if unemployment falls below 6.5%, which would generate around €3 billion in additional savings. The duration of the compensation for the unemployed under the age of 57 will then be reduced by 40% to a maximum of 12 months.
Bonus Malus
Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 campaign promise, the bonus-malus is a system strongly contested by employers who aim to combat the abuse of short-term contracts. These are currently companies with 11 employees and more than seven sectors that consume many short contracts (such as accommodation and catering or transport and storage).
It is about adjusting the employer’s social security contribution – 4.05% of the salary – upwards (malus) or downwards (bonus), depending on “separation rate” companies compared to the median rate in their sector. Gabriel Attal announced that he charged Catherine Vautrin “to carry out consultation to identify the sectors intended to enter this system and at what pace”.
