Long-term unemployment creates distance. Not only from work, but also from the wider community. Since 2016, the French initiative known as Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée (TZCLD), or “Zero Long-Term Unemployment Territories”, has aimed to reduce that gap.
Its premise is clear: no one is unemployable, and lasting exclusion from the labour market is not inevitable. The scheme offers open-ended employment contracts, with working time adapted to individual circumstances, to people who have been unemployed for more than one year and have lived in the same area for at least six months.
How? Through the commitment of a volunteer local area, bringing together public authorities and local stakeholders, and through the creation of entreprises à but d’emploi (EBEs). These organisations develop useful, non-competitive activities tailored to local needs: local services, circular economy projects, recycling, solidarity-based mobility, and more.
The funding model is based on a structuring principle: reallocating expenditure linked to long-term unemployment, such as minimum income support, to finance the jobs that are missing. In short, turning a social cost into a territorial investment.
Ten territories were involved in 2016; there are now eighty-five. The second phase of the experiment is due to end in 2026, a decisive year for its possible long-term legislative future. The initiative is also now reaching beyond France: Belgium, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany are among the countries drawing inspiration from the French model to test similar forms of sustainable employment.
Beyond the figures, TZCLD reflects a constitutional principle drawn from the 1946 Preamble to the French Constitution: “Everyone has the duty to work and the right to obtain employment.” This right appears to find a territorial expression here, enabling each person, in turn, to fulfil that duty.
No distance between us.
ærige is coming to meet you.
