2023-11-14 20:01:10
Good news for the French wallet. As inflation strangles households, the government finally reversed its idea of reducing the list of foods that can be purchased with meal vouchers on January 1, 2024.
It will remain possible to use meal vouchers to pay for all food shopping, Minister for Commerce Olivia Grégoire announced on Tuesday, while the list of eligible products was to be shortened on January 1, 2024. The measure in force since August 2022 “will continue throughout 2024” and “nothing will change for the French,” declared Olivia Grégoire on M6.
The unchanged ceiling
Since August 2022, the use of meal vouchers has been extended to all food products, even if they are not directly consumable without cooking or preparation (flour, pasta, rice, eggs, fish, meat, etc.). This exemption was to end on December 31, 2023.
“In 2023, it was widely used by the French. Inflation is coming down, food inflation is starting to come down, but it remains difficult,” she argued. The usage limit of 25 euros per day will also remain unchanged, she said. Previously, meal vouchers were used to pay only for meals, ready meals, prepared salads, sandwiches (served on site or to take away) as well as fruit and vegetables or dairy products.
A stop considered too “abrupt”
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, had already said, in the afternoon, “in favor of us extending this provision beyond December 31, 2023”. “Is it easy to do?” “, he asked. “No, because we need a legislative provision,” he noted. “We are currently studying the legislative possibilities which would make it possible to extend this right of use beyond December 31, 2023,” continued the number 2 of the government, specifying that we do not yet have this “legislative solution”.
The date of December 31, 2023 was included in the law of August 16, 2022 relating to emergency measures for the protection of purchasing power. This deadline raised a real bronca on Tuesday. “The government did not anticipate the end of the measures within the framework of the purchasing power bill. It seems completely absurd to us to stop it so suddenly on December 31,” criticized Aude Luquet, MP (MoDem) for Seine-et-Marne.
A “financial scandal”
This is a “socially dramatic measure for millions of French people caught by the throat by inflation. This indifference to suffering is no longer acceptable,” protested Marine Le Pen, on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Hadrien Clouet, LFI deputy for Haute-Garonne, also denounced on X, “a financial and health scandal”.
“While inflation on consumer products has reached 21% in two years, I am convinced that this decision is very bad news for the purchasing power of the French and for the balance of our plates,” had added the senator from Alpes-Maritimes, Alexandra Borchio Fontimp (Les Républicains).
Five million employees affected
“The idea was to strengthen the purchasing power of households in a period of crisis, but (…) purchasing power is still very tested”, also noted on France Info Nadia Ziane, director of the consumer department of the the Rural Families association, also calling for the perpetuation of this “small measure which allowed us to have a little breathing room at the end of the month”.
Meal vouchers are used today by more than 5 million employees to pay for meals or food services with some 234,000 approved merchants. On the side of restaurateurs, however, the Union of Hotel Trades and Industries (UMIH) said it was “formally” opposed “to any further renewal, even temporary,” of the exemption.
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