Unemployment insurance, renewable energies, security… The “busy” return to parliament for parliamentarians

Even before returning to school, deputies and senators are warned. If they managed not to sit in September in extraordinary session – a first for twenty years, caused by the new configuration in the National Assembly – they will be entitled to a “busy parliamentary calendar” in the fall, announced the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, on August 31, at the end of the government seminar. Unemployment insurance, renewable energies, security, budget… From October 3, these are all projects launched by the executive which will be fiercely debated on the benches of an Assembly devoid of an absolute majority and a Senate dominated by the right.

After a start to the legislature where the main government measures concerning Covid-19 and purchasing power were adopted thanks, in particular, to the votes of the elected Les Républicains (LR) after often stormy sessions, the presidential majority will have to strive to find on each text “project majorities”in the words of M.^me Thick headed. The challenge is all the more perilous in an Assembly where each agreement reached is fragile and where the oppositions demonstrated in July that they could beat the presidential coalition thanks to alliances of circumstances.

Controversial measure

At the Palais-Bourbon, the opening of the ordinary session at the beginning of October will be devoted to the examination of the bill on unemployment insurance, after a passage in the Council of Ministers scheduled for Wednesday, September 7. The text aims in particular to “extend the application of the bonus-malus until the end of August 2024” for companies in certain sectors that often use short contracts. It will also postpone until the end of 2023 the compensation rules resulting from the 2019 reform which are supposed to stop on October 31. But, in a social return which promises to be tense, the most controversial measure concerns the modulation of unemployment benefits according to the economic situation. “When things are going well, we tighten the rules and when things are going badly, we relax them”summarized the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, at the end of July.

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“We are in a paradoxical situation with a million jobs to be filled despite significant residual unemployment”believes the Renaissance deputy for Hauts-de-Seine Pierre Cazeneuve, for whom the opposition “will have a hard time justifying” not to vote for this text: “I challenge anyone who went to meet economic players this summer in their constituency to say that the number one problem is not recruitment in areas such as catering, technical trades, construction…” New conditions for the unemployed already denounced by the deputies of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes). “The question is not the will to work, but under what conditions people work and for what remuneration”explains the co-president of the ecologist deputies, Cyrielle Chatelain.

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