France: government unveils its unemployment insurance reforms

On 18 June, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe along with Labor Minister Muriel Pénicaud presented the government’s unemployment insurance and support for employment reform axes. This forms the third of its labor market reforms and comes after its 2017 Labor Code reform ordinances and its 2018 training program strategy. These latest reforms are aim to cut unemployment by between 150,000 250,000 over three years via augmented support systems and it also aims to deliver savings of €3.4 billion between 2019-2021 primarily as a result of new compensation eligibility criteria (€2.85 billion in savings targeted here). In addition, the reform measures aim to make employers that are excessively resorting to short-term employment contracts more responsible. 
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Axis 1: promoting more responsibility among businesses by way of a bonus-malus system that would aim to curtail their excessive use of short term employment contracts as an ‘HR management method,’ explained the Labor Minister. Currently in France, 70% of all hiring is done via employment contracts of less than one month’s duration, which results in perpetuating a costly system of insecurity, according to the Minister. Two measures will comprise this axis:

  • A bonus-malus system to apply across 7
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