Could you still cover your food shopping bill a little by getting your restaurant vouchers from the supermarket? This possibility, granted as an exception since Covid to support purchasing power, is debated on Tuesday in the Senate, which wishes to extend it.
After the National Assembly at the end of 2024, the upper house is considering a bill at the end of the afternoon aimed at extending the use of meal vouchers for food shopping at the supermarket.
Extension until the end of 2025 or the end of 2026?
This text was to be examined in mid-December in the Senate if Michel Barnier's government had not been overthrown. But the censorship had a consequence: since January 1, 2025, it is (theoretically) no longer possible to buy food products that need to be prepared in the supermarket. Hence the need to legislate quickly to restore this exemption. This measure of support for employees is generally consensual, but disagreement remains in Parliament: should the exemption be extended until the end of 2025 or the end of 2026?
The National Assembly opted for a two-year extension, until the end of 2026. But in committee, the Senate, dominated by the right, proposed limiting it to one year, calling for an in-depth reform of the “ticket restaurant” by the end of 2025 to adapt it to changing uses, linked in particular to the development of teleworking.
If this version is maintained by the upper house on Tuesday in public session, the text will have to continue its journey through Parliament until an agreement emerges between the two chambers, further postponing its potential promulgation.
-A final adoption this Tuesday?
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 definitive adoption on Tuesday.
“If we choose a different date for the Assembly, we will leave on a legislative shuttle… Whereas if we vote for a compliant text, tomorrow we will be able to open the file in depth with a view to a reform”, justifies the centrist Nadia Sollogoub .
Even if in December she advocated an extension limited to 2025, in particular to reassure restaurateurs who are opposed to this exemption, the rapporteur Les Républicains Marie-Do Aeschlimann is this time more open and assures that she will be a “facilitator” in finding a compromise.
“I think we don't need 24 months to resolve problems already identified on the meal voucher. 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,” she assures.
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