Michel Barnier is walking on eggshells with this proposal for a day of solidarity

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– Michel Barnier not convinced by the solidarity day proposal from the Senate Social Affairs Committee.

One less public holiday or seven hours of unpaid work each year? To date, nothing has obviously been decided. If the first proposal was defended by the Ministers of the Economy and the Budget, the second shock measure comes from the Senate, more precisely from the Social Affairs Committee, which recommends setting up such a mechanism equivalent to the day of solidarity. This measure, which would make it possible to alleviate 2.5 billion euros the Social Security deficit, however, is far from achieving consensus within the government.

So much so, according to The Parisianthat the subject arrived on the Matignon political breakfast table, Tuesday November 19. In this regard, the Prime Minister asked the members of the “majority” the question: Should the French work seven hours a year for free? If the Minister of the Budget, Laurent Saint-Martin, once again showed himself in favor of the measure, Laurent Wauquiez did not oppose itwhile demanding that new options be studied.

A system too complex for businesses?

For his part, Michel Barnier would be very reserved about this mechanism, believing on the one hand that additional revenue is necessary in order to achieve thepublic deficit targetbut on the other hand that the measure is too unpopular to date. He would thus plead for a «dialogue social»which makes an interlocutor questioned by say The Parisian what “if you want to be (popular), you have to change jobs”.

However, apart from the purely political and budgetary aspect, the Prime Minister would fear the complexity of the system. The Senate Social Affairs Committee has in fact not set any modalities, but recommends that these unpaid hours be determined at the discretion of companies, “according to their needs and their organization”. Its implementation could therefore be very complicated.

Finally, according to our colleagues, the president of the Social Affairs Committee in the Assembly and former Minister Delegate in charge of Health and Prevention, Frédéric Valletoux (Horizons), is concerned about the final destination of the money recovered even though the Senate committee requested that it be returned to “elderly or disabled people”. Will Michel Barnier give in? The proposal was to be debated starting Tuesday evening.