France’s minimum wage, the Smic, will rise by 1.6% as of December 1 and will go from 1,477.93 euros net per month to around 1,502 euros, almost 24 euros more, with a decree that must be published this week. The Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, announced it this Monday after meeting unions and employers in Matignon (the headquarters of the French Government) in the midst of a wave of protests over the cost of living, and defended it before the press: “The second most important increase in 20 years, it should not be underestimated.”
According to the French Administration (which can be consulted at this Service Public link), those 1,477.93 net euros are equivalent to 1,867.02 gross euros per month for a 35-hour week, collected in 12 payments. That is why the figure of 1,502 euros cannot simply be put next to the minimum interprofessional salary in Spain, since the Spanish minimum wage is set gross and is distributed into 14 payments.
“Regarding the Smic, we decided two things: we decided to bring forward the increase to December 1 and we decided to take this increase to 1.6%,” explained the Minister of Labor, Jean-Pierre Farandou, at the press conference, who later translated it into euros: “When the calculation is made, the barrier of 1,500 euros is passed.” With this revaluation, the Smic adds three increases in 2026 (in January, in June and now in December) and, according to the minister’s data collected by Public Sénat, it accumulates 5.3% in the year, about 75 net euros more per month.
The increase comes after weeks of protests that, according to the French press, began in September, when high school students blocked their schools, and to which unions, civil servants, farmers and the yellow vests have been joining, with a strike day on November 5 and incidents in several cities, which has led the Executive to call this social conference with unions and businessmen.
Of the 1.6% announced, around one point corresponds to the automatic increase due to inflation that occurred on January 1 and that is now brought forward a month, and the other 0.6 points are the extra push decided by the Executive itself (the so-called “coup de pouce”), the first since 2012, as stated franceinfo. That last push came with François Hollande at the Elysée. Those 0.6 points are equivalent to about 9 euros per month, although the CGT, with its own accounts, leaves the real improvement at 5 euros.
The president of the Medef employers’ association, Patrick Martin, explained briefly in an interview in franceinfo that “a bad response is given to a real problem.” Martin recalled that, with this, the Smic rises three times this year while “no one talks about employment, investment and growth anymore”, which for him are “the true answer” to the loss of purchasing power.
“If you want to respond to these legitimate expectations of purchasing power, you have to create jobs where they are being destroyed. Growth is needed where recession is bordering on,” insisted Martin, who warned: “With the increases in wage bill, there are lots of companies in labor-intensive sectors that are going to be in losses.” The business leader also said that the branches of activity will have to “negotiate blindly” as long as they do not know what the contribution reductions that companies receive will look like.
The unions asked for much more. The CGT demanded 150 euros per month, the CFDT 100 and Fuerza Obrera (FO) 130, and the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, did the math after Matignon left: “He has announced a 23-euro increase in the Smic on December 1, when we know that, in principle, the Smic should automatically rise by 18 euros on January 1.”
“The Government announces to us, therefore, a boost of 5 euros. 5 euros is a kilo of tomatoes. With the Government and the employers it is 5 bucks and not even a Mars,” Binet ironized in reference to the chocolate bar. “We have not come here to beg for alms,” added the CGT leader, who has called on “all employees, retirees, and young people” to join the strike and the demonstrations on Tuesday, November 17, called by the public service unions.
At the CFDT, the country’s first union, its general secretary, Marylise Léon, described the increase as “insufficient”, although she celebrated that “for the first time” a part of the aid to companies depends on salaries being negotiated in each branch. Fuerza Obrera was glad that “the dogma that systematically rejected the push to the Smic” had fallen, and the president of the CFE-CGC (the union of managers), Christelle Thieffinne, said: “It is ruled out that we will witness an even stronger compression of the tables” (that the agreed salaries are even closer to the minimum).
What other measures has the French Government announced?
The Minister of Economy, Roland Lescure, announced that the fuel premium, a tax-free aid that companies can pay their workers for commuting, will maintain its cap of 1,000 euros in 2027. “We have decided to extend the increase in the fuel premium cap in 2027,” Lescure explained about a limit that, according to the Service Public sheet on transport costs, is 300 euros per year for a combustion car and which was temporarily raised to 1,000 euros for what is paid between October 1 and December 31, 2026.
In the public transport subscription, French law obliges the company to pay 50% of the cost, and in 2026 it allows that, if it decides to go further, that payment is tax-free up to 75%, as explained in that same sheet. The Government wants to extend this advantage in 2027, but paying 75% will continue to be voluntary for companies. The two measures must be included as amendments in the 2027 Budget, which is now being debated in Parliament.
The measure that most affects the agreement salaries is another decree that the Government wants to publish this week and that will calculate in a less favorable way the reductions in contributions of companies in the branches of activity whose minimum salaries remain below the Smic. According to the data provided by the French Ministry of Labor, there are 69 branches in this situation and one in two has not renegotiated their tables in ten years, while the CGT raises the figure to 122 out of 200.
“The Government has announced to us that it is finally going to publish the decree that they have had to publish for three years. Only that, in that decree, in the best of cases, companies would be sanctioned in 2028,” criticized Binet. Léon, for his part, set a deadline for the negotiations: “As far as the negotiations of the branches are concerned, it is the 15 days of the last opportunity,” since Lecornu wants results at the beginning of December.
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The prime minister will receive the public service unions on Friday the 13th and, despite criticism, maintained that what was announced this Monday is a first step. “It is not a settlement,” Lecornu warned. He also defended that the figure is studied so that it is not a “source of job destruction.”