It’s now official. It will still be possible to do your food shopping with meal vouchers next year. On Monday, by a final vote in the Senate, Parliament urgently adopted the extension until the end of 2024 of the system which was to expire at the end of 2023. The text, presented by the government as a measure to combat inflation still high, was adopted by 322 votes to 2 by the senators in the evening. The parliamentarians of the High Assembly kept the same editorial version as that adopted by the National Assembly at the end of November.
This will allow the system to come into force as quickly as possible, “a necessity in the very short term” according to Minister of Commerce Olivia Grégoire. The system, implemented in 2022, allows some 5.4 million employees in France to use their meal vouchers to purchase non-directly consumable products on the shelves (flour, pasta, rice, meat, etc.) , while they are normally reserved only for directly consumable products in addition to restaurants.
The meal ticket will have to be “modernized”
In the Senate, several environmentalist and centrist senators tried, in vain, to limit the extension to six months (until June 30, 2024). The government, in favor of extending the system temporarily, repeated Monday evening that it would be open to a lasting reform of the meal voucher, particularly with a view to its dematerialization. “We need to modernize it, dust it off,” said Olivia Grégoire. However, pure and simple sustainability “requires more in-depth work and consultation,” she added.
Les Républicains rapporteur Marie-Do Aeschlimann went in the same direction by asking for a broad vote without modification “immediately and in the face of the emergency”. She nevertheless underlined the “reservations” expressed by the restaurateurs against which the Senate will be “vigilant. »