Leigh Thomas of Reuters reports that lawmakers are pushing to make the French work an extra seven hours each year without pay in the latest budget proposal. Thomas writes:
France’s national budget is so strained that lawmakers are pushing a proposal to make the French work an extra seven hours each year without pay – the equivalent of one working day – to generate extra funds for state coffers.
The measure, which was approved in the Senate upper house of parliament on Wednesday but which could still be thrown out of the final budget bill, would yield an extra 2.5 billion euros ($2.63 billion) in revenues from additional labour charges.
It comes as Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s fragile ruling coalition seeks to pass a 2025 budget through a starkly divided parliament, with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) threatening to topple the government with a no-confidence vote.
The amendment, proposed by centre-right Senator Elisabeth Doineau, would make people work an extra seven hours at some point over the course of the year, for which they would not be paid salary but for which their employers would have to make additional social security contributions. […]
Even Barnier’s own finance minister, Antoine Armand, is critical of reducing the tax incentive, saying that the French generally needed to work longer.
“An hour longer worked is an hour more of social security contributions,” he told Le Parisien newspaper on Wednesday.
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