The government has not yet announced the details of its new unemployment insurance reform, but its potential consequences are already beginning to be assessed. According to a document from Unédic, revealed on Saturday May 18 by The worldand of which AFP obtained a copy, up to almost a third of beneficiaries would be affected if the executive decided to tighten the conditions for granting rights.
While the executive has yet to formalize its choices, the organization responsible for managing this scheme has distributed internally a study estimating the impact of different scenarios on beneficiaries and on expenditure. At the end of March, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, listed three possible levers to reform unemployment insurance: the duration of compensation, the level of compensation and the condition of affiliation, that is to say the time that you must have worked to be compensated.
On this last parameter, among the avenues mentioned is the fact that it will be necessary to have worked nine months over the last two years, and no longer six. According to Unédic’s internal document, 11% of beneficiaries would be affected by a deferral of entitlement if this duration were extended to seven months and the scheme would save 400 million euros per year. The proportion would rise to 31% if the duration was increased to twelve months, for a saving of 2.3 billion euros.
The impact would be even stronger if the executive decided to reduce the reference period during which one must have worked to receive benefits, by reducing it from 24 months to 18. Tightening the affiliation condition would firstly affect benefit recipients under 25 years old or leaving a fixed-term or temporary contract. “This confirms that the people furthest from employment and quality employment will be affected”commented to AFP Olivier Guivarch, CFDT unemployment insurance negotiator.
The study also evaluates the scenario of a reduction to 12 months in the duration of compensation, which is currently 18 months for those under 53. It would result in less coverage for 45% of beneficiaries and reduced expenditure of almost 6 billion for Unedic. Reducing the duration of compensation would affect a different profile of beneficiaries, particularly those over 25, with higher than average benefits or finding themselves unemployed after a conventional termination.