For Medef, there are a lot of public holidays in France. Sacrificing two would make it possible to get one point of GDP and create jobs, assures the Employers’ Organization.
This is a reflection that will not improve Medef’s popularity rating. The employers’ organization proposes canceling two public holidays per year, and estimates that this would make it possible to get a point in GDP and create 100,000 jobs. but that is not all. Medef is also fighting a war against public holidays in the middle of the week.
Because the latter would disrupt the entire work week, while employees would have the audacity to attach vacations to these days to give themselves an extended weekend. Thus, Medef intends to draw inspiration from the English model, since public holidays are closer to weekends.
“That’s nonsense,” judged on Friday Estelle Midi group Emma Dancourt, who remembers France has 11 public holidays, which is just the European average. For comparison, in Cyprus, Spain or even Slovakia, there are 14 public holidays per year.
“These holidays are also a story of culture”
“I find that there are not enough public holidays,” estimates Emma Dancourt, who does not see the economic benefit by citing the Portuguese example: “Medef thinks it will give us a point of GDP except that Portugal did the exercise by removing 4 public holidays in 2013 .and they went back in 2016 because it didn’t change at all or not at all.”
For Thibault Lanxade, former Vice President of Medef in charge of VSE and SMEs, eliminating public holidays is a vital need for the economy. He assures RMC: “We have a social security deficit of 33 billion for 2022, a non-medical deficit of 17 billion, and a public deficit of 2.834 billion. However, if we want to maintain social protection, we must reduce this deficit.”
And to reduce this deficit, there is a magic solution, do a little more. “It’s called solidarity,” Thibaut Lankside asserts, while canceling Pentecost in solidarity with the elderly; After the 2003 heat wave, there was a failure.
“These public holidays are also the history of a culture, even religious holidays belong to our history,” Emma Dancourt recalls, however, in her passage, explaining that in any case, French work suffices.
