Pensions, unemployment insurance, end-of-life bills: three thorny issues pending
As the endless mulling over the name of the next prime minister continues, four thorny issues remain unresolved.
- Pensions: the big question
Repeal, suspension, new reform? One year after the highly controversial pension reform came into force, gradually shifting the legal retirement age to 64, there is uncertainty about its future. The New Popular Front (NFP) and RN promise to return to 62; socialist or centrist voices rather advocate re-discussing the parameters; the Macronists make 64 a “red line”.
By the end of 2024, “840,000 people” will have already retired according to the new rules, according to the director of the National Old Age Insurance Fund (CNAV), Renaud Villard. Some 685,000 people will have already benefited in 2023 from an increase in their pension. “small pension” – major “social measure” of the reform – and another 1.1 million, with a more complex file to recalculate, will in turn be revalued this autumn.
If it is repealed, what will happen? “This is the big question” For many French people in particular “future pensioners” EITHER “those who changed” their departure for one or two quarters, says Karim El Hachmi, UNSA representative at the CNAV, who stresses “concerns” of CNAV employees if it were necessary to reconfigure the system. “Nothing is impossible”assured this week to Parisian Renaud Villard, as long as the calendar is not “too brutal”.
- Unemployment insurance: pending
What will happen to unemployed beneficiaries after 31 October? The reform that tightened access conditions and compensation rules was suspended on the night of the first round of the legislative elections, at the end of June, and the current rules were extended twice. All the unions denounced “the most useless, unjust and violent reform ever seen”.
Several of them had negotiated an agreement with employers in the autumn of 2023, but its validation depended on further discussions between the social partners on the employment of older people, which failed in the spring. “If we still have unemployment insurance reform pending today, it is because we want to pickpocket the unemployed to pay for other things”“This is what CFDT Secretary General Marylise Léon said on Wednesday to Franceinfo. “The agreement signed by the social partners last year must be implemented”said.
At Medef we also advocate returning to the 2023 agreement, because “We are not going to renegotiate something that everyone agreed on”. “We ask for control back to us”and that new negotiations are underway, Michel Beaugas (FO) told AFP.
- End of life bill review: halted
The big one “social reform” promised by Emmanuel Macron will it see the light of day? The bill on assistance to the sick and people at the end of life, preceded by a “national debate” and a citizens’ convention in 2023, has been the subject of intense discussions in the Hemicycle since 27 May. The solemn vote was due to take place on 18 June, before the dissolution interrupted the examination.
Fifteen articles out of twenty-one remain to be examined, but the most decisive one has been voted on: Article 5, which establishes access to a “assisted death”in the form of assisted suicide or euthanasia; and Article 6, which establishes the conditions for the administration of a lethal substance to patients “suffering from a serious and incurable condition with a potentially fatal prognosis in an advanced or terminal phase”The bill also included a section on the development of palliative care, with a budget of 1.1 billion euros until 2034.
On July 19, the rapporteur of this aborted bill, the MP (of various lefts) Olivier Falorni, re-elected in Charentes-Maritimes, announced that he would present the “first bill of the XVIImy legislature »incorporating in full the text voted by the commission as well as all the amendments adopted during the session. By 28 August, it had collected 120 signatures from deputies, from nine parliamentary groups (in addition to the National Rally) [RN] and the LR deputies allied to RN in Eric Ciotti’s group, Correct! [aujourd’hui Union des droites pour la République (UDR)]. “The exam will start from the beginning of the text, but not from scratch”the parliamentarian defends.
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