“This is exactly why Gabriel Attal was chosen,” recalls a close friend of Emmanuel Macron

The government has announced that it will set new compensation rules for job seekers from July 1, taking note of the “disagreement” between the social partners, according to a press release Monday from the Ministry of Labor. As soon as he arrived in Matignon, the Prime Minister announced that he wanted to “go further”.

End of the suspense over unemployment insurance: the government is taking back control and will itself set new compensation rules for job seekers, which should be more restrictive, from July 1. The executive will take “a decree of deficiency“by June 30 which will have”with the aim of helping to achieve full employment and promoting the rapid return to employment of unemployed people receiving compensation“.

As in 2019, employers and unions are once again losing control over the definition of these rules to the benefit of the executive. Those currently in force expired in principle at the end of 2023, but had been extended by a “joining decree“until June 30, in order to allow unions to negotiate, particularly in the case of seniors.”Anyone who wants to kill their dog accuses it of rabies“, was indignant, in a press release, the Force Ouvrière union, for whom the government “pretext” of the failure of negotiations on the employment of seniors to regain control over unemployment insurance.

“The page is blank”

The government assures on the contrary that it “regrets this disagreement and takes note of it“, according to a press release from the Ministry of Labor. “Nothing is decided, nothing is acted upon, the page is blank“, swears hand on heart the entourage of Catherine Vautrin, the Minister of Labor, who insists on her desire to consult the social partners again before deciding on the details of the measures.

It must be said that this new reform, barely a year after the previous one, tenses the majority, “well beyond what we call the left wing”, notes a figure in the Assembly. The subject was “poorly launched“, regrets a prominent MP: in public opinion, the turn of the screw is associated with a desire to save money, when the executive wants to make it a marker of its ability to “move the system” to achieve full employment.

From the start, Gabriel Attal set himself the ambition of “increasingly encouraging people to return to work. Without taboo”. The Prime Minister announced this in his general policy speech to the National Assembly on January 30, 2024: “We must go further in reforming unemployment insurance“The rules will therefore indeed change, confirms the Ministry of Labor.”This is exactly why Gabriel Attal was chosen“, recalls a close friend of Emmanuel Macron: embodying what at the Elysée, we call “performative speech“Clearly, what the Prime Minister says, he does. And it is by relying on him that Emmanuel Macron intends to make his wish come true.”to act until the last quarter of an hour“.

Rehabilitate the value of work

Three days before the verdict of the financial rating agencies, the government is sending a new signal of its desire for reform. A month and a half before the European elections, Gabriel Attal is also implementing what he judges to be, for a Prime Minister, the best way to help the Macronist candidate, Valérie Hayer, who is struggling in the polls: keeping busy problems of the French. He repeats it again and again: one of the keys is the rehabilitation of the value of work, beyond the need to make up the deficit.

“He is building a right-wing image because he thinks that is where there is a political space“, regrets a former comrade. A minister warns about the political cost of this new reform. According to her, the ambient gloom leads the French to perceive themselves more than usual as unemployed people on borrowed time. Unlike Matignon, even in within the government, some fear that the French will disapprove of measures which would suggest that the government, in order to save money, “hits on job seekers“, without trying to do it elsewhere.