"We have to get out of false debates and caricatures: encouraging working people to find a job more quickly than today when many opportunities exist. This is not to cast shame on them, to make them feel guilty or to allege that some + take advantage of the system +", launched the minister at the start of the debates before the National Assembly.
"I never claimed that and I will never claim it," insisted the former socialist.
The text initially provides for extending the current unemployment insurance rules, resulting from a hotly contested reform of Macron's first five-year term.
It also triggers the possibility, by decree, of modulating unemployment insurance so that it is "stricter when too many jobs are unfilled, more generous when unemployment is high", in the words of Emmanuel Macron during the presidential campaign.
This "modulation mechanism" will be "concerted in depth with the social partners for the next 6 to 8 weeks" and "we will have to find simple, legible and fair rules", underlined Mr. Dussopt who plans to come into force early 2023.
"I hear some deputies in this hemicycle defending a + right to laziness +, a right to a + society without work +", he added in reference to certain elected representatives on the left.
He wants "to be the minister for the + right to employment +".
The government is hoping for right-wing support for its bill, which is strongly opposed by the left-wing Nupes alliance.
The VAE is currently "experienced as an obstacle course" and is "too little used", then noted Carole Grandjean, Minister Delegate for Vocational Training, who aims "100,000 courses initiated per year by the end of the five-year term ".
The bill is discussed in first reading until Wednesday, with more than 300 amendments on the menu.
© 2022 AFP