Make labour market reform the top priority on the government’s structural reform
agenda
• Simplify and shorten layoff procedures by, for example, reforming the labour
courts, as intended.
• As public spending declines, cut taxes further on labour.
Reduce the weight of public spending to ensure that taxes promote sustainable growth
• Eliminate the “general powers clauses” for all local governments (including for
communes and the municipal groupings or intercommunalités). Reduce the
number of communes. Expand the responsibilities and size of intercommunalités
as planned, so as to shrink the role of communes.
• To control health-care spending close small public hospitals, place greater stress
on outpatient surgery and generic drugs, and give doctors stronger incentives to
limit prescriptions, as planned.
• Make sure that pensions contribute to the reduction of public spending compared
to GDP, modify the parameters of top-up pensions to ensure their sustainability
in the context of the negotiations between unions and employers planned in
2015, and continue to eliminate the exceptions attached to special pension
schemes.
• Modify the parameters of the unemployment benefits system, especially their
duration, when it is renegotiated by unions and employers in 2016, and
implement changes once the economy recovers. Make the link between benefits,
job search and training tighter and more effective.
• Pursue the development of an efficient environmental tax system, by aligning the
tax structure for fossil fuels with their carbon emissions and other externalities.
Provide high-quality vocational education and adult training to those who need it most
• In secondary vocational education provide highly qualified teachers and more
individualised support for students lacking basic skills. Hire teachers who
combine teaching with professional experience outside education, and provide
workplace trainers with pedagogical training.
• Use the envisaged quality-assurance system to introduce the certification of
training providers.
• Ensure the regions have sufficient capacity and financing to co-ordinate the new
vocational trainee guidance service.
Enhance the competitiveness of the economy and the business environment
• Engage an independent institution to conduct a thorough review of all existing
and proposed regulations affecting firms, applying the OECD Competition
Assessment Toolkit principles.
• Continue to streamline burdensome permit procedures for large new stores.
Eliminate restrictions on loss-leader selling, dates of discount sales and opening
hours (for which time-off and salary compensation should be negotiated).
• Continue to liberalise the regulated professions by: reducing entry requirements
to those needed to protect the public; narrowing professions’ exclusive rights;
eliminating regulated tariffs in potentially competitive activities; and gradually
abandoning quotas.