Unemployment insurance: The Mayor pleads for a “definitive” takeover of the State

“It is essential to continue structural reforms. Unemployment insurance reform is necessary to achieve full employment, the Prime Minister is right to point this out,” declared Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy in an interview with Le Monde.

For three months, the government has demonstrated its desire to tighten further unemployment insurance rightsafter two controversial reforms in this direction in 2019 and 2023. Gabriel Attal declared a few days ago that he would bring together “in mid-March” a government seminar “dedicated to the question of work” to notably “prepare the major decisions” to be taken in this area.

“Constraints that are impossible to maintain”

“We maintain the longest compensation period among developed countries: eighteen months. The responsibility of the social partners is the employees. The responsibility of the State is all those who are unemployed. For my part, I consider that the State should regain control of unemployment insurance definitively,” added Bruno Le Maire.

THE unemployment insurance system is currently managed by Unédic, a joint organization. The social partners renegotiate the rules every 2 to 3 years to take into account changes in the labor market, these rules being formalized in an agreement that the State validates. But since 2018, their room for maneuver has been restricted because the government sends them a “framework letter” in advance which sets objectives (notably savings) to achieve. Without an agreement, the State takes control again with a “deficiency decree”.

“All this little music, these untimely media interventions, it goes more in the direction of a healthier joint management of unemployment insurance because it is based on the long term, not on political time,” reacted the CFDT negotiator of unemployment insurance Olivier Guivarch. “We cannot have budgetary management of unemployment insurance by changing the rules every 3 to 6 months and using the unemployment insurance system as an electoral argument or a political policy argument,” he said. added during a press briefing.

For Michel Beaugas (FO), “it seems more and more obvious that the government wants to recover unemployment insurance” and that to achieve this “it will impose constraints on us that are impossible to maintain”.