Guest of 8 p.m. on TF1, Wednesday March 27, Gabriel Attal announced that there would be “a reform of unemployment insurance this year”. The Prime Minister also assured that the objective of falling below 3% deficit by 2027 would be maintained, while it reached 5.5% in 2023. He also announced that the State would bring complaint for slanderous denunciation against the student of the Maurice-Ravel high school, in Paris, who had accused the head of the establishment of having assaulted her after asking her to remove her veil.
The Prime Minister asked the Minister of Labor, Catherine Vautrin, to “prepare new negotiations” with the social partners for a “real, more comprehensive” reform of unemployment insurance from “this year”. “I want us to have the parameters of this reform in the summer so that it can come into force by the fall, as I committed to,” he added.
“Our goal is to achieve full employment, so that there are more French people working,” explained the Prime Minister. “My objective is not to attack any individual or the unemployed, it is to move a system to encourage more people to return to work,” he added.
Without deciding on the contours of the reform, he recalled that one of the parameters was “the duration of unemployment insurance compensation”. “Today is eighteen months. One way is to reduce this duration by several months. It must not go less than twelve months,” said the head of government.
Gabriel Attal also mentioned two other “tracks”: modifying the minimum time one must have worked to benefit from unemployment – today, six months in the last two years – and the “level of compensation”, namely “ How much do you get when you're unemployed and how does that fall over time? This last “track” has “less [his] preference”, but “we will let the social partners work”, he said.
To “de-emcardise” France, Gabriel Attal said he would like to “review the system of contribution reductions” so that this would provide “more incentive to increase” low wages.
“We have a system which means that, in fact, there is no longer much interest for anyone to increase employees who are on the minimum wage. It costs the employer very dearly, the employee on minimum wage, he will in the end earn less,” the Prime Minister explained on TF1. “We must have reductions in contributions which provide more incentive for employees to increase their salary”, he insisted, indicating that he had entrusted a mission “to two economists who will make proposals in June on the subject”.
Asked about the increase in the public deficit to 5.5% of GDP in 2023, Gabriel Attal maintained “the objective of falling below 3% of the public deficit” by 2027. “There are a lot of people who said that it was improbable that we would bring the deficit below 3% in 2018, when we did it with the President of the Republic. What I say is that yes, we are keeping this objective,” he said on TF1, while France’s rating could be downgraded by the financial rating agencies in the coming weeks.
Among them, the Moody's agency on Wednesday judged it "unlikely" to achieve France's budgetary objectives by 2027. "The objective is to get France out of debt. We now spend 50 billion euros per year to pay interest on our debt. I would rather put them in schools, in the police,” the prime minister said.
To do this, he says he does not want to increase taxes but wants to “achieve full employment, that is to say (…) ensure that there are more French people working, because it is additional revenue.”
Gabriel Attal, however, claims to have "no dogma" concerning the taxation of superprofits and that of the richest, recalling that energy companies and biology laboratories had already been subject to a specific tax. “France is not a tax haven for anyone. 10% of French people pay 70% of income taxes. We have a tax on high incomes,” he continued.
“But I have two red lines,” added the head of government. Do not increase taxes on the middle classes, on French people who work or have worked all their lives and who always earn a little too much to get help, but never enough to be able to get by on their own", nor taxes " for everything that helps finance the work of the French.”
Gabriel Attal declared that he wanted to launch “a major initiative” to “better prevent accidents at work” and “improve the quality of life at work”. “We have too many accidents at work in France, we have too many French people dying at work,” declared the head of government, referring in particular to the statistic of “two” deaths per day. To improve the situation, Mr. Attal plans to “bring together all the partners, the social partners, elected officials, parliamentarians, so that there is a major initiative taken on this subject.”
“We must improve the working conditions of the French, especially those who have the most difficult jobs,” he added Gabriel Attal.
Asked about a potential four-day work week, Gabriel Attal assured that he did not want to “reduce working hours” but would like experimentation in more companies. “We have to get out of this straitjacket of thirty-five hours a week, there are public officials who say they want to work their hours over four days rather than five. I want us to give these freedoms and these flexibilities,” he added.
He also said he wanted to improve working conditions, particularly for the most difficult jobs, in order to prevent accidents at work. He will soon bring together the social partners on this subject.
At the start of the interview, the Prime Minister answered questions about the incident which took place at the Maurice-Ravel high school in Paris. He gave his support to the principal. The latter had been the subject of death threats online following his altercation with a student whom he had asked to remove her veil.
Gabriel Attal also announces that the State is filing a complaint against the student for “slanderous denunciation”. The young woman herself had filed a complaint against the head of the establishment for violence which did not result in incapacity for work. The complaint was dismissed on Wednesday, said the Paris prosecutor's office.
“Those who are on the front line to enforce (…) secularism are our principals, our teachers, all national education staff, and I want to pay tribute to them. I have always been committed to putting an end to what we call “no waves”, by never accepting that the authority of national education personnel be flouted and that people attack secularism,” he asserted.
