The chair of the Francophone socialist PS party Paul Magnette wants to introduce a basic income for young people aged 18 to 25, he said on Saturday.
At that age, there are a lot of inequalities between young people, and they shape the rest of their lives, Magnette said in an interview with L'Avenir.
There are inequalities "between those who can study and those who cannot, those who have to work to pay for their studies and those who do not, those who can do free internships and those who cannot, those who have good salaries and those who have very low salaries, and so on," he stressed.
The basic income for young people would "ideally" be created at the European level, Magnette added. "Europe needs such mobilising projects."
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On the other hand, Magnette is not in favour of the idea of a general basic income, for everyone – as previously proposed by Georges-Louis Bouchez, the chair for the Francophone liberal MR party.
"They say: 'We'll give you €1,000 whether you are unemployed, retired or working, and then you can figure it out.' First of all, that is far below the poverty line and therefore insufficient," Magnette said. "It would be a general social regression, which is not surprising from the mouth of MR."
"Secondly, you give enormous power to the employers, who can say, 'You already have €1,000, I will give you another €500 and with that you have to manage to survive'," he said.
That is why the formula of a basic income for young people seems more interesting to Magnette. He defends this idea in a book on ecosocialism, which he wrote with Hugues Bayet (federal MP for the PS party) and which will be published in October.
