The Senate must study, on January 15, a bill aimed at extending the use of meal vouchers for shopping.
Because on January 1, this possibility is suspended due to censorship from the Barnier government.
While waiting for the debate in 15 days, what can you still buy in the supermarket with your meal vouchers?
This is a debate that many households are awaiting. The Senate included on its January 15 agenda a bill aimed at extending the use of meal vouchers for food shopping at the supermarket. A possibility suspended by the censorship of the Barnier government.
This text, already adopted by the National Assembly, was to be examined in mid-December in the upper house, but due to the departure of the government, the debate was postponed. Since this Wednesday, January 1, the French can no longer use their meal vouchers to buy certain food products at the supermarket.
No more pasta, meat or flour
For example, it is no longer possible to pay for flour, butter, oil or any other food product that is not directly consumable with meal vouchers. Only products such as prepared meals, salads and sandwiches can be purchased through this method. A drop in purchasing power for the 5.4 million employees in France who use their “restaurant vouchers” to buy products on the shelves requiring preparation, such as pasta, rice, meat, also now excluded from this perimeter.
The text on the agenda in the Senate should therefore once again make it possible to pay for these foodstuffs through meal vouchers, pending a major reform of this system. Problem: the two chambers of Parliament have not yet agreed on the timetable for the measure, the Assembly voted for an extension until the end of 2026, while the Senate opted for a limit to the end of 2025 during its work in committee. If this version is maintained by the upper house, the text will have to continue its journey through Parliament again, further postponing its potential promulgation.
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Restaurant vouchers: why restaurateurs are demanding an end to “shopping cart vouchers”
If the end of the exemption allowing people to pay for their groceries with meal vouchers is a hard blow for households, restaurateurs, on the contrary, believe that the expansion of the system is not justified. “The meal voucher becomes a food voucher, it definitively loses its purpose”, said Catherine Quérard, president of the employers' union of restaurateurs GHR, in mid-November. According to the organization, the share of receipts from meal vouchers in catering has decreased over the past two years, while that spent in mass distribution has increased from 22.4% at the end of 2022 to 30.1% in mid-2024.
