Posted Sep 29, 2022, 4:10 PM
The fog is dissipating in bits on the future of pensions. It is an understatement to say that gray areas remain after the announcement of a reform project voted “before the end of winter” and the confirmation of a firm presidential will to push back the legal age of departure to 65 years old in 2031. What fate will be reserved for the special regimes and the civil service, which continue to benefit from particular advantages compared to the common one? What costly counterparties will still have to be granted to these employees to avoid blocking?
On these subjects, history does not bode well, a fortiori in a context of acute crisis where the weapon of the strike can quickly become a lethal weapon. But, after five years of pursuing a chimera – that of a perfect universal regime – then five months of dithering on the objectives and method of what is ultimately a very classic reform, the French finally know what to expect: they who leave on average at 63 years old will have to wait 2 more years in ten years.
14% of GDP
It is still necessary that the executive manages to make this starting point a point of arrival. He will need more skill than he has shown lately. Making a pension reform a national drama is not inevitable, as the Balladur reforms of 1993 and Touraine of 2014 have shown. By approaching the north face, that of age, this political Himalaya – this would be the fifth “summit” conquered in thirty years with the Fillon reforms of 2003 and 2010 – Emmanuel Macron does not choose the easiest path. But the most effective.
With the indexation of pensions on prices, the postponement of the legal age is what best guarantees the sustainability of the financing of our pensions… and the standard of living of retirees. It is never useless to remember that in the absence of reform, it is not 14% of its wealth that France would devote today to pensions but 18%.
Reform pensions, how and why? If the Head of State finally gives a semblance of an answer to the first question, he still has to explain the essentials to French people who have been made very skeptical by the Covid crisis about the advisability of working more, and longer. There is no need to invent fallacious reasons such as finding resources to finance other priorities such as addiction.
It is simply about safeguarding our pensions and our rights because pensions financed by borrowing are never guaranteed. They will be all the less so if the financial markets, increasingly nervous, end up being really worried to see France beat a retreat on one of the very rare reforms given to the credit of its trajectory of control of its finances. public.
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