It has no longer been legally possible for two weeks to pay for pasta, rice or meat with restaurant vouchers. For four years, thanks to an exemption adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic, these means of payment could be used to purchase food products to be prepared. But this ended on December 31, 2024, and could not be extended, the censorship having postponed the examination of a text which aimed to maintain this authorization. The Senate is considering the question this Tuesday, January 14, 2025 at the end of the afternoon, and could put it back in place.
The text, already adopted at the end of 2024 in the National Assembly, was to be examined in mid-December in the Senate, before censorship by the Barnier government. This measure of support for employees has a consensus among parliamentarians, who wish to move the subject forward quickly. But disagreement remains: should the exemption be extended until the end of 2025 or the end of 2026? The Assembly opted for a two-year extension. But in committee, the Senate, dominated by the right, proposed limiting it to one year, calling for an in-depth reform of the “restaurant ticket” by the end of the year, to adapt it to the evolution of uses, with the development of teleworking.
If this version is maintained by the upper house on Tuesday in public session, the text will have to return to Parliament until an agreement emerges with the Assembly, further postponing its potential promulgation. But many senators will try, by way of amendment, to modify the text to make it identical to that of the National Assembly and allow adoption from Tuesday.
If in December she advocated an extension limited to 2025, in particular to reassure restaurateurs who are opposed to it, the rapporteur Les Républicains Marie-Do Aeschlimann is this time more open and assures that she will be «facilitatrice» to find a compromise. “I think that we do not need twenty-four months to resolve problems already identified on the meal vouchershe assures AFP. But the system must be put back in place as quickly as possible to be able to put an end to the vagueness that currently reigns and modernize this system at the end of its rope.
