French left slams government plan to cut unemployment benefits further

3 months ago 45

French left-wing candidates in the EU elections have criticised Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s plan to cut unemployment benefits, which he revealed in an interview on Sunday, just two weeks before the European elections.

In an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, Attal announced that the government would implement a decree to cut unemployment benefits on 1 July, with the changes taking effect in December.

Attal said the rationale behind this decision is to tackle France’s unemployment rate, which stood at 7.3% in March 2024, according to Eurostat, higher than both the eurozone (6.5%) and EU (6%) averages.

Under the proposed reform, unemployment benefits would be paid for 15 rather than 18 months in the event of job loss, and eligibility criteria would be tightened by requiring those eligible to have worked for eight out of the last 20 months rather than the current requirement of six months in the previous two years.

Reacting to the announcement on LCI, socialist lead candidate Raphaël Glucksmann said: “No economist will tell you that there is a direct correlation between returning to work and the number of restrictions placed on unemployment insurance.”

Glucksmann suggested alternative measures, such as taxing benefits and dividends from large French companies, which he said are undertaxed compared to workers.

“We need to accept having a social model more geared towards activity while still maintaining a protection that remains one of the strongest in Europe,” Attal told BFMTV during a visit to the Paris region on Sunday.

Manon Aubry, the leading candidate of the LFI (The Left), criticised it as a reform “of unprecedented social brutality”, considering it unfair and unjustified.

She described the reform as “a logical consequence of the new budgetary rules that impose the most severe austerity measures ever witnessed on our continent” and which were approved at EU level by the S&D, EPP and Renew groups.

“This is the most aggressive reform the government has made on unemployment insurance,” said CGT trade union secretary Denis Gravouil at BFMTV, pointing to a reduction in state spending of €3.6 billion.

“It is a populist reform,” François Hommeril, president of the CFE-CGC union, told RMC on Sunday, considering that “the state plans to take money from employees [and] make it available to the state budget for other lines of expenditure”.

(Théophane Hartmann | Euractiv.fr)