2024-05-10 07:50:28
Birth leave, promised by Emmanuel Macron and called to replace the current little-used parental leave, will be shorter and better paid. It should come into force at the end of 2025. What we know.
Pour boost the birth rate in France, Emmanuel Macron notably announced, during a press conference on January 16, 2024, the creation of“birth leave” to replace current parental leave. It “will be better paid and will allow both parents to be with their child for six months if they wish,” said the Head of State, believing that the current leave “creates a lot of anxiety because he is extremely little and poorly paid”, and thus creates “impossible situations”.
“Above all, it will be shorter than the current parental leave, which can last up to three years and which keeps many women away from the job market,” he observed. According to the Elysée, the idea is to “unblock the economic and social obstacles to the desire to have children”.
Birth leave will therefore replace parental leave, created in 1977 and which is difficult to convince due in particular to its low remuneration (429 euros per month). This system allows parents, at the end of their maternity or paternity leave, to suspend their professional activity until the child is two years old – three years if the parents share the leave.
The new birth leave, the terms of which will be subject to discussions with social partnerswill be a “coupling between existing leaves, maternity (16 weeks) and paternity (28 days), a supplement which should allow them to stay a total of six months with their child”, specified the Elysée on January 22, 2024.
“Three months for mothers, three months for fathers, cumulative during the child’s first year and compensated up to 50% of salary up to the Social Security ceiling (1,900 euros) », specified Emmanuel Macron in an interview with “Elle”, on May 9, 2024. “Employers will be able to top up this compensation and have better practices”, he hoped.
“This new leave involves major changes which require work and consultations, and this must pass, to be adopted, by the Social Security financing bill, indicated the presidency, specifying that “the aim is to move into the next PLFSS in fall 2024.”
Emmanuel Macron predicts that the new system, which “is added to paternity and maternity leave”, enters in force at the end of 2025.
A birth rate at half mast
In 2023, only 678,000 babies will be born in France, or 48,000 fewer than in 2022.Getty Images
An aging France and a declining birth rate: the figures from the demographic report for the year 2023 carried out by INSEE have confirmed the country’s new equation. As of January 1, 2024, the French population stood at 68.4 million inhabitants, a figure up 0.3%, as in 2022.
But France has now fallen below the 700,000 birth mark, a figure not seen since 1946. In 2023, only 678,000 babies were born, or 48,000 fewer than in 2022, itself already marked by a historic decline in the natality. Compared to 2010, the year when it reached its last peak, France recorded 150,000 fewer births. Which corresponds to a drop of almost 20%.
#birth #leave #change