Parliament definitively adopted on Tuesday June 2 a text transposing into law an agreement concluded between social partners to reduce the duration of unemployment benefit in the event of conventional termination, a measure which should allow significant savings for the unemployment insurance system. The National Assembly approved this bill by 353 votes to 114 on second reading, with the support of the right, the center and the far right, and in the same terms as the Senate two weeks ago.
“You have allowed social democracy to join parliamentary democracy”, welcomed the Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou in the hemicycle. “This reform should allow 15,000 additional returns to employment,” added Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on X.
In mid-April, at first reading, the text suffered an unexpected setback by being rejected by the deputies, due to lack of mobilization of government troops, outnumbered that evening by those of the left, with La France insoumise in the lead. Which forced the executive to put it back on the agenda.
Created in 2008, conventional terminations allow an employer and an employee to terminate a permanent contract amicably and the employee to receive unemployment benefits. With 515,000 individual contractual terminations signed in 2024, they are increasing, and now represent more than a quarter of unemployment insurance expenditure.
“A drift”, according to Jerôme End (LR). Horizons MP Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé highlighted the profile of beneficiaries of conventional terminations, “more qualified”, and yet remaining comparatively “longer unemployed”. “This paradox has a name, rights optimization,” she said.
A social agreement transposed into law
The agreement concluded in February between three employers’ organizations (Medef, CPME, U2P) and three trade union organizations (CFDT, CFTC and FO) provides in particular to reduce from 18 to 15 months the maximum duration of compensation for beneficiaries aged under 55, after an amicable end to the employment contract.
This duration would be set at 20.5 months for those over 55 (compared to 22.5 months currently for 55-56 year olds, and 27 months from 57 years old). Seniors would, however, be able to request an extension of their compensation, assessed on a case-by-case basis. This agreement, which the CGT and the CFE-CGC did not sign, required a modification of the Labor Code to allow its implementation. On the left, if a majority of socialists abstained, France insoumise, the communist group and the Ecologists opposed the text.
Those over 57 will lose “a quarter of their benefits”, denounced Sophie Taillé-Polian (environmental group). This while many conventional terminations are “in reality disguised dismissals, used by employers to get rid of an employee without reason and without risk of being brought before the industrial tribunal”, she added. The measure should allow up to 800 million euros in annual savings from 2029.
