The economist Gilbert Cet was appointed, Tuesday, October 31, president of the Pension Orientation Council (COR) during the Council of Ministers, according to the official report, and thus replaces Pierre-Louis Bras, much criticized by the executive at the time of pension reform.
The government announced last week that it wanted to thank the former president of this body, ensuring that it was “not a sanction” but a “consistent timing”, after nine years of presidency.
Several unions had denounced an ouster linked to the positions taken by Pierre-Louis Bras during the debate on pension reform, which contradicted certain government forecasts.
The COR, which brings together 41 members – parliamentarians, representatives of employers and unions, members of major administrations and experts – is an expertise and consultation body attached to Matignon but which works independently. Its president is appointed by the Council of Ministers. It is responsible for “analyzing and monitoring the medium and long-term prospects of the French retirement system”.
Chairman of the group of experts on the minimum wage
Born in 1956, and holder of a doctorate in economics from the University of Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne, Gilbert Ce teaches at the Neoma business school and the University of Aix-Marseille.
Former member of the Economic Analysis Council, he is deputy to the general director of studies and international relations of the Banque de France, and since 2017 president of the group of experts on the minimum wage, responsible for submitting a report to the government each year. He is also the author of several works relating to labor law and macroeconomic policies.
In April 2017, at the time of the presidential election, he signed with around forty other economists a platform of support for Emmanuel Macronpublished in The world. “We believe that Emmanuel Macron’s program is best able to lay the foundations for the new economic growth that our country needs. It is because it bets on work, youth, “innovation, inclusion, investment and environmental transition”, wrote the authors of this column. He has since spoken several times in the press, notably to support the pension reform which he, for example, judged, in The echoes in January, “fairly balanced” and able to “ensure the sustainability of the regime”.