French social security is suffocating. The deficit soars from 15.3 billion euros in 2024 to 23 billion in 2025. Facing this budgetary hemorrhage, the government is experimenting with an unprecedented solution in Europe: extracting revenue from mutual severances to shore up social accounts. Since January 2026, the employer contribution on conventional ruptures has risen from 30% to 40%, transforming a social tool into a budgetary adjustment variable.
The contradiction is stark: how can a useful mechanism be preserved while controlling its cost? Each conventional rupture weighs heavily on unemployment insurance, whose total cost approaches 37 billion euros per year, with nearly 11 billion linked to this single mechanism. The French state is betting on behavioral taxation to regulate professional separations.
The Explosive Cost of Social Success
Conventional ruptures have jumped 20% in five years, transforming an exceptional mechanism into a mass phenomenon. 515,000 conventional ruptures in 2024, following a 17% increase between 2019 and 2024, and an estimated weight of 21% to 26% of unemployment benefit spending, for approximately 9.4 billion euros annually. This mechanism, created in 2008 to allow employers and employees to separate amicably, has become a considerable budgetary burden.
According to Unédic, two-thirds of these ruptures result in compensation; in 2024, 333,724 claimants were compensated by France Travail following a conventional rupture. This massive success is worrying public finances. In the government’s view, it is sometimes diverted into “disguised resignation,” “arranged dismissal,” or “hidden early retirement.” These are all situations that lead to costly coverage by unemployment insurance.
For the executive, the increase to 40% sends a “price signal” intended to stem misuse of the scheme without closing the door to departures that are genuinely justified. But the tension remains acute: overtaxing a social tool risks destroying it.
Taxation That Weighs Differently According to Profiles
The increase in taxation transforms the economic equation of separations. A severance of 80,000 euros exempt from contributions will trigger an employer contribution of 32,000 euros. For a severance of 50,000 euros with 30,000 euros exempt from contributions, the employer must now pay a contribution of 12,000 euros (40% of 30,000 euros) compared to 9,000 euros previously. The 3,000-euro increase per case substantially modifies the economic equation of separations.
Analysis by socioprofessional categories reveals contrasting effects. Only executives escape the general downward trend, with a 5.7% increase in 2024 after increases of 12.5% in 2023 and 17.7% in 2022, thanks to their greater capacity to negotiate advantageous departure conditions.
The median severance reaches 4,720 euros for executives, compared to only 900 euros for employees and 1,140 euros for workers. The gap explains executives’ resistance to the tax increase: the relative impact of the employer contribution decreases when negotiated amounts are high.
Taxation creates a distortion: companies employing executives retain a relative advantage, while those employing large numbers of employees and workers suffer more severely from the impact of the measure.
Social Security’s Budgetary Urgency
As Unédic is expected to post a deficit of 2.1 billion euros in 2026, the Bayrou and then Lecornu governments had already requested in August 2025 that representative organizations reach agreement to find cost-saving measures, with conventional ruptures in their sights. The 2026 PLFSS (Social Security Financing Law) provides for reducing the deficit to 17.5 billion euros, or 0.6% of GDP, an improvement of 5.5 billion compared to 2025. But this trajectory remains fragile.
Pierre Moscovici, president of the Court of Auditors, describes the objectives for controlling social spending as “very ambitious, very fragile, very vulnerable, and in some ways almost hypothetical.” The 2026 deficit was provisionally set at -19.4 billion euros under ROBSS format, but could reach -23.7 billion by 2029, driven by a deficit in the Health branch that would increase from -13.8 billion in 2026 to -17.7 billion in 2029.
The objective: generate nearly 2.6 billion euros in additional revenue for social security. The government is exploring all avenues. The 2026 LFSS attempts to resolve an impossible equation: reduce the social deficit without sacrificing business competitiveness or the level of social protection.
Budgetary urgency transforms labor taxation into an adjustment variable. Taxation of conventional ruptures fits into a broader logic of holding economic actors responsible for the cost of social mechanisms.
The Perverse Effects of Accounting Logic
If the measure is confirmed, the perverse effect is obvious: by making amicable severance more expensive, employers could turn more toward outright dismissal. This substitution risks degrading social dialogue and increasing labor disputes.
In the absence of an amicable agreement, contract ruptures would pass more often through dismissals, with a risk of rapid increases in disputes before labor courts. The French judicial system, already overburdened, could face considerable additional pressure.
Sectoral analysis confirms this trend. The decline primarily affects real estate activities (-12% in 2024), accommodation and food service (-5.8%), and retail (-2%), affecting almost all sectors of activity.
A conventional rupture can now cost as much as, or more than, a standard dismissal, which requires more fine-grained arbitration between dismissal, conventional rupture, and other solutions. In sectors with a high proportion of executives, conventional rupture remains attractive to both sides, with the increased employer contribution more easily absorbed, but the 2024 decline reflects deliberate hardening.
A European Laboratory Under Surveillance
France is testing a new approach in Europe: using behavioral taxation to regulate a social mechanism while financing social protection. European neighbors, facing the same financing challenges, are watching closely.
Demographic trends are testing the French social security system: the decline in the number of active people and an aging population increase spending without generating sufficient revenue from work-related contributions.
The National Assembly rejected on Thursday, April 16 a bill aimed at tightening unemployment compensation following a conventional rupture, inflicting a further blow to the Lecornu government. Deputies adopted by 77 votes to 32 amendments to delete the bill’s sole article, effectively rejecting a reform nonetheless negotiated by the social partners. A blow that measures the political sensitivity of the issue.
Between tax increases and parliamentary resistance, the French state is gradually abandoning its posture of supporting professional transitions in favor of balancing public accounts.
The French measure could inspire other European countries facing growing social deficits. It raises a fundamental question: how far can social relations be subjected to taxation without distorting their primary function? Between maintaining a social safety net and balancing public accounts, France is experimenting with a narrow path that could redefine the future of the European social model.