Employment law Alert

On December 10, 2020, the parliament adopted draft bill 7719 amending Article L. 222-9 of the Labour Code and increasing the minimum social wage by 2.8 per cent.

This new legal provision, which shall come into effect as of January 1, 2021, will have the following consequences:

• The minimum social wage for non-qualified workers will be raised from currently 2,141.99 EUR gross to 2,201.96 EUR gross. For qualified workers, the new social minimum wage will be of EUR 2,642.36 EUR gross.
• The threshold of the maximum contribution basis, which is of 5 times the minimum social wage, will be increased from 10,709.97 EUR to 11,009.8 EUR. This means that higher salaries will contribute more to the social security and thus have a slightly lower salary.

The current index - 834.76 - remains unchanged.

Amidst Covid-19 pandemic crisis, the government decided as per draft bill 7718 upon a one-time lump-sum capital grant of 500 EUR per employee whose monthly salary is greater than or equal to the minimum social wage and less than or equal to the qualified minimum social wage. Such aid will be granted to certain companies for its employees hired before 31 December 2020 and in service during the first half of 2021. This draft bill is however yet not adopted.