Objective: to relaunch its second five-year term by turning the page on pension reform. On April 17, 2023, after the validation of most of the text by the Constitutional Council, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech to remind the French of his roadmap.
Work, justice, health, education… The President of the Republic then insisted on several “priority projects”. One year after this speech, franceinfo takes stock of the progress of the main works announced.
“Bringing as many RSA beneficiaries back to work”: a reform not yet widespread
On the employment front, Emmanuel Macron heard “redouble our efforts to bring as many RSA beneficiaries back to work as possible”. The law “for full employment” of December 18, 2023 made the payment of active solidarity income conditional on fifteen or even twenty hours of integration activity per week.
The text also provides that beneficiaries are automatically registered with France Travail (formerly Pôle Emploi). Until then, only 41% of RSA beneficiaries were registered with Pôle Emploi, according to a note published in 2022 (PDF document) by the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees). Reinforced support is offered to all beneficiaries, and some of them benefit from joint monitoring by a France Travail advisor and a social worker from the department.
For the moment, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of this conditioned RSA, the experimentation of which went from 18 to 47 departments at the beginning of March. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal maintained on this occasion that one in two beneficiaries returned to employment after five months, but this statement should be taken with caution. According to our information, the head of government is in fact based on a very fragmented sample of around 5,000 people, out of nearly 21,300 beneficiaries of the conditional RSA. However, France had 2.1 million people on RSA in total at the end of 2022, according to Drees.
“Patients suffering from chronic illness without a GP will have access to it”: a promise far from being kept
In terms of health, Emmanuel Macron assured in his speech that “by the end of the year [2023]600,000 patients with chronic illness who do not have a treating doctor will have one.”. In the process, the government launched an action plan to accelerate on the subject. But the objective was not achieved. “We won’t be there”, recognized on the franceinfo set in December 2023 Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo, then Minister of Health. She had during this interview given “from memory” the figure of “180 000″ patients suffering from a chronic illness who have found a treating physician.
By counting “600,000 patients with chronic illness”, the head of state was far from the mark anyway. In March 2023, the Ministry of Health recorded more than 700,000 people in this situation. Contacted by franceinfo, the National Health Insurance Fund provided an updated assessment: in December 2023, 240,000 people with chronic illness found a treating doctor and 472,000 others did not have one.
“Increasing employment for seniors”: persistent difficulties
Emmanuel Macron had promised to“increase the employment of seniors and help with retraining”. The government has set itself a target of an employment rate of 65% “by 2030” for 60-64 year olds, while it was only 36.2% in 2022, according to figures from the Statistics Directorate of the Ministry of Labor (PDF document). A rate below the European average and that of OECD countries. It is clear that the difficulties persist.
“There was no inflection major impact on senior employment in the past year”note from franceinfo Bruno Coquet, economist specializing in unemployment. “The employment rate of seniors has been rising for around twenty years, but it is structural.” This increase, common to most Western European countries, is explained by “the entry of baby boomers into the over 55 category”explains Hippolyte d’Albis, chief economist of the General Inspectorate of Finance, in his publication Seniors and employment.
The executive saw its pension reform as one of the most effective levers for increasing the employment of seniors. But a Unedic study published in March 2023 shows that previous reforms have rather had the opposite effect. “The increase in the legal retirement age has paradoxically not had a net positive effect on the employment of seniors”, notes Hippolyte d’Albis. Indeed, even if this elevation may have contributed to a “increase in employed seniors”she also participated in a “increase in the number of people unemployed, on disability and on sick leave”argues the economist in his work.
The three and a half month negotiations between unions and employers to find an agreement improving the employment of seniors ended in failure on the night of April 9 to 10. The government’s validation of the unemployment insurance agreement negotiated in the fall is therefore compromised. This could quickly become obsolete anyway. Gabriel Attal announced at the end of March a new reform of unemployment insurance. Reducing compensation for senior job seekers is one of the avenues considered.
“Finding solutions to professional wear and tear”: a mixed result
The president wanted to “find solutions to professional wear”, caused by certain professions with difficult conditions. Three months before her intervention, the Prime Minister at the time, Elisabeth Borne, was pleased to have “enriched all the devices which can take into account the arduousness [au travail]“ with pension reform. However, his observation needs to be qualified. If the reform did make it possible to lower the threshold for obtaining certain criteria of arduousness, giving the right to retire earlier, three criteria have “disappeared” since 2017: carrying heavy loads, the presence of painful postures and mechanical vibrations.
These so-called “ergonomic” risks, recognized by the Ministry of Labor as responsible for 87% of occupational illnesses recognized each year, are however taken into account for prevention and retraining actions for the employees concerned. These measures are financed by an investment fund in the prevention of professional wear and tear, created in April 2023 and allocated one billion euros over the five-year term.
“A mover who carries a heavy load is not considered arduous. It’s professional wear and tear.”famous with franceinfo Emeric Jeansen, lecturer in social law. “Previously, he could hope to accumulate points year after year to retire earlier. Now, all he has is the right to demand that his employer implement preventive actions to prevent it from getting damaged.”he summarizes. “To my knowledge, nothing has happened since the pension reform law”concludes this specialist.
“Initiate the reform of the vocational high school”: work in progress
Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted “initiate the reform of the vocational high school” so that “the greatest number of our adolescents and young people access either truly qualifying training or employment”. The reform has been well underway. Since the start of the 2023 school year, measures to prevent school dropouts and promote the professional integration of young high school students have been developed, such as rewarding periods of training in a professional environment or even teaching in small groups for reinforced teaching in mathematics and French in voluntary establishments.
The start of the 2024 school year should be an opportunity to implement another important measure: the creation of two differentiated pathways between students who wish to continue their studies and those who wish to enter directly into the world of work.
While the details of the reform remain to be defined in the coming months, the initiative is already being debated among teachers’ unions. “This reform will increase the difficulties. Young people who choose the business path will lose 180 hours of lessons”, deplores Axel Benoist, co-secretary general of the vocational education union SNUEP-FSU. According to him, the rest of the reform must be presented in the spring, with a view to implementation at the start of the 2024 school year.
“Systematic replacement of absent teachers”: improving
This is one of the main demands of parents, some of whom even filed a complaint against the State in May 2023 over the failure to replace absent teachers. Emmanuel Macron had repeated the desire of the executive to systematically replace absent teachers from the start of the 2023 school year.
A decree of August 8, 2023 established new rules in this area. Several tools have been put in place to improve the situation, notably the “teachers pact”. This system allows teachers to receive an annual bonus in exchange for additional missions, such as replacing their absent colleagues. In the second level, the replacement of absences of less than 15 days had until now to be provided internally by the colleagues of the absent professor. From now on, rectorates can call on external solutions to fill these absences.
Although resources have been put in place, not all absences are replaced. According to government data, the replacement rate in primary education gained 8.7 points between August 2022 and September 2023, reaching 77.4%. Over the same period, we see a slight improvement (0.5 points) in secondary education, with 94.5% replacement. The government’s objective in primary and secondary education is to reach 95%.
“Continue to recruit more than 10,000 magistrates and agents”: still far from the mark
In matters of justice, the president reiterated the government’s intention to “continue to recruit more than 10,000 magistrates and agents”. A reform project was presented in May 2023. Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti promised the creation of 10,000 civil servant positions. Contacted by franceinfo, the ministry detailed certain recruitment objectives: “1,500 magistrates, 1,800 clerks by 2027 and 1,100 justice attachés by the end of 2024”. For this, the justice budget was increased to reach 11 billion euros in 2027. One year after the announcements by the Head of State, where are we?
According to the ministry, “2,400 contract agents have already been recruited in the courts since 2020 as part of local justice”. The Chancellery does not specify the nature of the positions occupied by these agents. The government website offers to monitor the progress of recruitment, but it has not been updated since August 31, 2023. By this deadline, 252 magistrates had been recruited, or 17% of the targeted objective.
Four months later, the National School of the Judiciary (ENM) revealed the composition of its 2024 class, comprising 353 aspiring magistrates, according to the establishment’s website, an increase of almost 37% compared to the class of 2022 (258 students). “You will thus be part of the largest class of ENM listeners since its creation”rejoiced Nathalie Roret, director of the establishment, in a video for new admits.
For clerk positions, the Ministry of Justice launched a first recruitment session in October 2023, with 450 positions to be filled, according to France Travail. To date, 412 candidates have been pre-selected, according to the Ministry of Justice website. Still according to this source, a second recruitment session will take place in April 2024.