“Removed after two offer refusals”: Michel Barnier's explosive proposal on unemployment

The new Prime Minister defends a position radical on unemployment.

The white smoke has finally come out of the Elysée Palace. And with it, an unexpected name: Michel Barnier. This former minister under François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, now aged 73, is now the new Prime Minister. Virtually unknown to the general public, unless you follow politics assiduously, this member of the Republicans will therefore settle in Matignon and form a government, with the aim of relaunching several issues, including unemployment.

A thorny subject on which Gabriel Attal's successor had already taken a position in the past. And the least we can say is that his guiding principle was not to facilitate obtaining aid in the event of job loss. The former Brexit negotiator had said he wanted to “protect the French, not allow some of us live off our social system.”

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This statement was made in 2021 by Michel Barnier, when he was seeking the LR nomination to be a candidate in the 2022 presidential election. In his program, the septuagenarian had formulated a shocking proposal: systematically eliminating unemployment benefits after two refusals of reasonable job offers. It was then one of his flagship reforms to “regain the honor of work.”

The idea of ​​the former deputy European has, in part, been taken over by Emmanuel Macron and the former government. Since January 1, 2024, unemployment benefits are cut if, after a fixed-term contract or a temporary assignment, a person refuses, over a period of one year, two permanent contracts whose hiring conditions (salary, working hours, location, assignments, etc.) are strictly similar to his last job.

His positioning probably appealed to the head of state because a new tightening of unemployment rules is scheduled for the end of the year. From December 1st, it is planned that you will have to have worked 8 months in the last 20 to receive an income from France Travail, compared to 6 months in the last 24 currently. Furthermore, the maximum duration of compensation should be reduced from 18 to 15 months for those under 57.