Le outburst of Muriel Pénicaud qualifying as“economic and social error” the reform of the personal training account did not make the headlines. It is, however, symptomatic of the evolution of Emmanuel Macron’s social policy from one five-year term to another. Appointed Minister of Labor in May 2017, the former director general of human resources of the Danone group had been heavily involved in the reform of this tool which allows any active person to acquire rights to training and to mobilize them. at key moments in his career.
By creating a credit system in euros – and no longer in hours -, by backing it up with an online platform opening the way to a wide range of titles, diplomas and certifications, the government of the time wanted make each beneficiary master of his professional life. This liberalization has been so successful that five years later, against a background of soaring expenditure and not always very serious training offers, the executive felt obliged to put a lock on the system: now, unless be unemployed or have reached an agreement with their employer, they will have to pay a little out of pocket to finance their training (the exact amount is not yet specified).
Where the government sees it as a way of empowering users, the former minister reads in it a worrying questioning of the acquired right to freely manage its training. Muriel Pénicaud is particularly worried about the working classes who risk being discouraged by the institution of a dependent remainder. “Today, 80% of beneficiaries are workers and employees, half are women and 20% are over 50”, she repeated last week in many media.
The new approach that prevails with regard to the personal training account is perfectly replicable to the pension reform. In 2017, it was a question of giving birth to a new system, retirement by points, whose claimed purpose was to allow everyone to control their destiny. Presented during the presidential campaign as a promise of emancipation, the merger of the forty-two existing schemes into one was supposed to produce only winners and allow everyone to choose their retirement age, depending on the number of points acquired.
Alignment and normalization
When the reform became clearer, in 2019 and 2020, the myth collapsed: the losers, because there were some, noisily manifested themselves. And the irruption of a pivotal age without which the system could not be balanced has overcome the idea of free choice.
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