Last September, France’s labor minister, Olivier Dussopt, announced that whole swathes of the country had been selected to participate in an experiment. It tested a reform to the Revenu de solidarité active (RSA), a benefit that provides minimum financial support to people with very low incomes. Currently, around 1.6 million French households receive this support with few conditions; but with the experiment in 19 of France’s 101 territorial départements, the program subjected recipients to a new program including obligations to spend at least fifteen hours a week following a plan to be reinserted into the workforce. “All of these départements,” a government press release about the trial program explained, “reflect broad geographic, demographic, and social diversity.”

A year later, the rest of France will be getting a taste of the fruits of the experiments which Dr Macron has conducted on his lucky patients. A formalization of this reform was worked into the government’s new employment law, which was debated in the National Assembly last week. Since an announcement by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne this April, it’s been official that a central part of the reform will be to make access to the RSA conditional on work requirements.

The reform had earlier been broadcast by President Emmanuel Macron in an announcement he made in March 2022, during his reelection campaign. Those receiving the benefit, he claimed, have “an obligation to devote fifteen to twenty hours a week to an activity which facilitates their re-entry into the workforce, for a better balance between rights and duties.”