France will soon see an end to the much publicised 35-hour working week as part of a new set of economic reforms recently approved by the French parliament.
Senators agreed on several key reforms this week designed to boost the country's flagging economy, including changing the rules on strikes, tightening criteria for unemployment payments and deregulating the retail industry to boost competition.
The most controversial of these was the decision to allow companies to ditch the 35-hour working week. Under the new rules businesses will be allowed to negotiate with employees directly to decide their working hours.
The measure was brought in by the Socialist government ten years ago in an attempt to cut unemployment. According to French statistics institute INSEE, the move created 350,000 new jobs between 1998 - 2002, but at the cost of billions of euros in state aid to companies.
Opinion polls show that the general public in France are reluctant to part with the old system, but Finance Minister Christine Lagarde claims the reforms could help to lift consumer purchasing power by as much as 1,000 per year.
"This law is going to bring our country at least 0.3 percentage points of growth a year beginning in 2009, or about 6 billion of additional wealth a year and 50,000 extra jobs", she told journalists this week.