Pensions, unemployment insurance, end-of-life bill: three thorny issues pending
As the endless debate over the name of the next prime minister continues, four thorny issues remain pending.
Pensions: the big question
Repeal, suspension, new reform? A year after the entry into force of the highly contested pension reform, which gradually shifts the legal retirement age to 64, uncertainty reigns over its future. The New Popular Front (NFP) and the RN promise to return to 62; socialist or centrist voices argue instead for rediscussing the parameters; the Macronists make 64 a “red line”.
By the end of 2024, “840,000 people” will have already retired under the new rules, according to the director of the National Old Age Insurance Fund (CNAV), Renaud Villard. Some 685,000 people have already benefited in 2023 from an increase in their “small pension” – main “social measure” of the reform – and 1.1 million others, whose file is more complex to recalculate, will in turn be revalued during this autumn.
If it is repealed, what will happen? “This is the big question” for many French people, in particular “future pensioners” Or “those who have shifted” their departure of one or two quarters, notes Karim El Hachmi, representative of the UNSA at the CNAV, who underlines “worries” CNAV employees if the system had to be reconfigured. “Nothing is impossible”assured this week At Parisian Renaud Villard, provided that the calendar is not “too brutal”.
Unemployment insurance: on hold
What will happen to unemployed people receiving benefits after October 31? The reform tightening the conditions of access and the rules of compensation was suspended on the evening of the first round of the legislative elections, at the end of June, and the current rules were extended twice. All the unions had denounced “the most useless, unjust and violent reform ever seen”.
An agreement had been negotiated by several of them with the employers in the fall of 2023, but its validation depended on other discussions between social partners relating to the employment of seniors, which fell through in the spring. “If today we still have a reform of unemployment insurance pending, it is because we want to pick the pockets of the unemployed to pay for other things”said CFDT general secretary Marylise Léon on Franceinfo on Wednesday. “We must implement the agreement signed by the social partners last year”she said.
At Medef, we are also arguing for returning to the 2023 agreement, because “We are not going to renegotiate something that everyone agreed on.”. “We are asking for our hand to be given back”and that new negotiations are opening, Michel Beaugas (FO) told AFP.
Review of the end-of-life bill: interrupted
The big one “societal reform” promised by Emmanuel Macron will it see the light of day? The bill relating to the support of the sick and the end of life, preceded by a “national debate” and a citizens’ convention in 2023, has been the subject of intense discussions in the Chamber since May 27. The formal vote was to take place on June 18, before the dissolution interrupted the examination.
Fifteen articles out of twenty-one remained to be examined, but the most decisive had been voted on: Article 5, which establishes access to a “help to die”in the form of assisted suicide or euthanasia; and Article 6, which sets out the conditions for the administration of a lethal substance to patients “suffering from a serious and incurable condition with a life-threatening prognosis in the advanced or terminal phase”The bill also included a section on the development of palliative care, with an allocation of 1.1 billion euros by 2034.
As early as July 19, the rapporteur of this aborted bill, MP (various left) Olivier Falorni, re-elected in Charentes-Maritimes, announced that he would file the “first bill of the 17th centurye legislature »by fully incorporating the text voted on by the committee as well as all the amendments adopted in session. As of 28 August, it had collected 120 signatures from deputies, from nine parliamentary groups (excluding the National Rally [RN] and the LR deputies allied with the RN in Eric Ciotti’s group, On the right! [aujourd’hui Union des droites pour la République (UDR)]. “The exam will start from the beginning of the text, but not from zero”defends the parliamentarian.
