EU economic governance and French social legislation

Abstract

Unlike other EU Member States, France has not been the subject of strict financial surveillance under the infamous Memorandums of Understanding (MoU). Nevertheless, from the very beginning of the economic crisis, France has been under intense scrutiny by the European institutions, mainly within the framework of the European Semester and the Excessive Imbalance Procedure (EIP). This article analyses the impact of these financial surveillance mechanisms on the design of recent French reforms in the fields of labour law and employment policy, with a particular focus on three main issues: the sanctions attached to unjustified dismissals, relations between sectoral collective agreements and firm-level collective agreements and access to unemployment insurance benefits. The analysis suggests that, while the European Commission initially exerted significant pressure towards the implementation of large-scale legislative reforms in the social field, from 2017 onwards it has seemingly eased its pressure on the French government. Inversely, although France initially seemed to strictly conform to the European recommendations, since 2017, the government has gone further, thus engaging in a profound transformation of the French social model. It therefore seems that the most recent French legislative reforms reflect more a political choice than an actual legal obligation stemming from the instruments of the EU Economic Governance.