Benefit cuts and later retirement under ‘Act II’ of Macron reforms
FRANCE will cut unemployment benefit for high earners and push people to work beyond the legal retirement age as part of reforms marking “Act II” of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency after seven months of “yellow vest” revolt.
Mr Macron rushed through probusiness, liberal reforms aimed at ending overregulation shortly after his election in 2017 but hit serious opposition, with weekly protests that turned Paris into a battleground.
With the “gilets jaunes” crisis finally abating and the centrist president’s popularity recovering, he has made it clear he intends to push on with a raft of measures which were stalled during the unrest.
In a speech to parliament yesterday, his prime minister, Édouard Philippe, detailed reforms for the second half of the five-year presidency, including a pledge of €27billion (£24billion) in tax cuts by the end of his term in 2020.
“It’s massive, it’s clear and simple,” he said during an hour-long address.
He also promised an overhaul of France’s generous but complex and debt-laden pensions system and incentives for people to retire later.
“We must work longer,” Mr Philippe said. “We will maintain the possibility to retire at 62, but we will define a pivot age and incentives to work longer.”
Regarding unemployment benefits, among the most generous in the world, he said these would be scaled back for high earners who lost their jobs. He also pledged to stop some monthly benefits for people made redundant.
“Social justice means making sure it pays to work,” said Mr Philippe.
He confirmed he would table a bill extending the right to medically assisted pregnancies to lesbians and single women. Currently, such treatment is only open to heterosexual couples with fertility problems.
He also pledged to accelerate green measures, including banning all use of disposable, non-recycled plastic by the state next year.
The reform road map came a day after Mr Macron confessed to having made a “fundamental error” in dealing with the yellow vest revolt.
“We sometimes came up with good answers but [were] too far from our citizens. That was a fundamental error,” he told European media.
Seen by many blue-collar workers as the “president of the rich”, Mr Macron was initially stunned by the scale of anger against him.
But he recovered somewhat during a nationwide “great debate” while his LREM party fared relatively well in last month’s European Parliament election, narrowly coming second to the farright.
Since the vote, Mr Macron’s popularity ratings have risen by five points to 32 per cent in the latest Elabe poll, a level unseen since last summer.
Yesterday, Mr Philippe said that French unemployment was now at a 10-year low, investment at a 12-year high and purchasing power rising.