Paris (AFP)

Barely 24 hours after announcing it, the government gave up on Tuesday to deprive seniors of an exemption from social security contributions for the use of home help, a measure that provoked anger including the majority.

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced in the National Assembly that the government was abandoning its plan to abolish the social exemption granted to the non-dependent elderly when they employ a home help, which should appear in the finance bill presented Friday. .

"I asked the Minister of Labor to give up this measure," said the head of government during the questioning session in the government. "So I want to reassure the professionals and the employers: these measures will not come into effect".

The government, which is looking for ways to save tax cuts promised by Emmanuel Macron, planned to abolish next year the age criterion of this benefit specifically granted to people over 70 who employ a home help, by reserving it only to elderly dependents (benefiting from the APA, the personalized autonomy allowance), or in a situation of handicap.

Currently, this exemption scheme created in 1987 costs the state 1.8 billion euros a year.

Interviewed on Monday on this project, the government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye had explained on LCI that it was to "refocus things so that the aid, when it exists, is addressed to the people who need it the most" , defending himself of "all" anti-old politics ".

The measure was expected to save "115 million euros", according to Labor Minister Muriel Penicaud, interviewed Monday on BFMTV. In parallel, "we put 115 million euros" in the aid to dependency "to create new rights," had also defended the Minister of Public Accounts Gerald Darmanin.

But after the episodes on the increase of the CSG and the under-indexation with respect to the inflation of pensions higher than 2.000 euros, the announcement has not passed, provoking the anger of the people concerned but also of the policies, including the majority.

- "Unanimous against" -

"This decision would have deserved a much more in-depth consultation," admitted Edouard Philippe Assembly, taclant in passing the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud, who was at the origin.

The announcement of this measure did not correspond to "the conditions that are consistent with what I set as an objective and what I want to follow as a method with regard to Act II of the quinquennium," continued the Prime Minister.

Mrs. Pénicaud "will send other proposals quickly that will be submitted to consultation with parliamentarians and with the sectors concerned," said Philippe, in response to a question by MP LR Gilles Lurton on LCP.

After this change, he denounced "government amateurism".

"The Prime Minister is reframing his Minister of Labor on topical issues, it is laughable", taunted for his part Sebastien Jumel, a spokesperson for PCF MPs, saying that the measure was rather dismissed because we are "to six months of municipal".

Before the questions to the government, the LREM MP Yvelines Marie Lebec had said that "in the group En Marche, this measure was rather unanimous against". "The general feeling was to say that we would prefer a global policy on dependence that a measurement approach, (...) a budget approach," she told the press.

The government is preparing for the end of the year a bill on the management of dependence.

The association Les Petits Frères des Pauvres, which was worried about "seniors being a variable of budget adjustment", said Tuesday "satisfied" with this turnaround.

"This government has learned to recognize when it is wrong," reacted Marie-Béatrice Levaux, president of the Fepem (Federation of Individual Employers of France), whose telephone platform, "since yesterday, was overloaded with worried calls."

© 2019 AFP