France: the Council of Ministers adopts the draft law containing reforms to “free up growth”

Today on December 10 the Council of Ministers adopted the governments draft law targeting growth and activity, in response to demands for structural reforms from the European Commission and its partners. This long-winded text is primarily known for two of its key measures: liberalization of regulated professions and Sunday & evening work. However in addition to these two issues the draft law contains provisions that especially treat collective redundancies (order of dismissals and reclassification abroad for example). With this text government will have to be ready for anything ranging from social protests to conflict in parliament where Prime Minister Manuel Valls will have to do battle with his own majority.
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Work on Sundays and evening work. Liberalizing Sunday working and evening work is probably the most symbolic measure of all those that concern the right to work. The measure is in response to challenges associated with developing ‘areas of economic and tourist attractiveness’. The law allows for the mayor to increase the number of working Sundays from 5 to 12 for retailers (food retailers already have special regulations).


The draft law also establishes a new area or zone called the ZTI – zone

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