“A decisive step towards fairer compensation for professional risks” | EUROtoday

OWe’ve by no means been so shut! The Social Security financing invoice (PLFSS) 2025, addressed to Parliament on October 10 after its adoption by the Council of Ministers, consists of in its article 24 a notable enchancment of the elemental rules of the traditional legislation of 1898 on compensation for work accidents and occupational illnesses (AT-MP).

According to this new textual content, their mounted and computerized compensation ought to now embrace, along with the standard a part of skilled harm – lack of incomes capability {and professional} affect – a so-called “functional” half. This, referred to as in frequent legislation “permanent functional deficit”, or DFP, consists of physiological and psychological harm, issues within the situations of existence and the struggling endured. If the skilled half is a operate of wage, this isn’t the case for the practical half.

In the system offered for by article 24 of the PLFSS, mounted and computerized compensation, with out fault of the employer, stays the pivot of the system. But the truth that a part of the DFP is compensated along with the skilled harm constitutes an actual enchancment within the destiny of the victims.

A method round

This vital progress is the results of case legislation gained by exhausting work by asbestos victims. On January 20, 2023, the plenary meeting of the Court of Cassation thought-about that the AT-MP pension paid to victims within the occasion of inexcusable fault of the employer (FIE) solely included the skilled portion of the damages and that, consequently , the practical half needed to be compensated as well as.

The utility of this choice led to a big improve within the quantity of compensation determined by the social divisions of the judicial courts. For its half, the Compensation Fund for Asbestos Victims (FIVA) needed to improve its price range by practically 50 million euros to take note of this improvement.

On May 15 of the identical yr, a nationwide inter-professional settlement (ANI) signed unanimously by commerce union organizations sought to learn from this authorized progress to all victims, and never simply these initiating inexcusable misconduct proceedings in opposition to their employer. . But this settlement, with very ambiguous wording, was reasonably perceived by professionals in reparation legislation and by victims’ associations as a method of circumventing the case legislation of January 20, 2023.

The affair took a extra political flip when the federal government of the time needed to translate this settlement into legislation. Article 39 of the PLFSS 2024 provoked the anger of victims’ associations, as a result of it was clear that it constituted a idiot’s discount. It solely marginally improved the lump sum compensation and, worse, within the occasion of FIE, essentially the most severely affected victims, equivalent to these affected by occupational cancers usually and people as a result of asbestos specifically, noticed their compensation considerably decreased in comparison with what they have been entitled to acquire after the judgments of January 20, 2023. Unacceptable.

You have 47.8% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.