The government has chosen to retreat and postpone the presentation of its reform in January. A new illustration of the difficulty of tackling this subject. Bruno Chrétien, president of the Institute of Social Protection, analyzes the delicate exercise with which the executive is confronting itself.
L’Express: The presentation of the pension reform has been postponed to mid-January. Did the government give in to pressure from the unions on the eve of the Christmas holidays?
Bruno Chretien: From the beginning, we are witnessing a back and forth game, while everyone’s positions have been known for a long time. The argument given, the election of Marine Tondelier at the head of Europe Ecologie – Les Verts (EELV) and Eric Ciotti for Les Républicains (LR), is a purely formal excuse: this should not stop a reform of this magnitude. The planned schedule was simply not the right one. Originally, the text was to arrive in the Council of Ministers in January, suddenly the date of the announcements was brought forward to mid-December: obviously, this strained relations with the unions, because the bilateral discussions were not even over. ! Especially since the social partners are manhandled on another point which they do not want to hear about: the transfer to Urssaf of the collection of supplementary pension contributions from private sector employees. They weren’t to be expected to make the executive’s job any easier…
The unions are united on the postponement of the retirement age and argue that there is no urgency to reform pensions. A position contrary to that of the government. Who is right ?
We are witnessing a classic game. The government and the employers say that the retirement age must be increased for the financial balance of the system and to respond to the lack of manpower. The unions respond for their part that the situation is not so serious, that we have before us the last bad years and that once the peak of the “baby boomers” has passed, the situation will improve. Overall, if we do not want to increase contributions or lower pensions, we will have to work more. In 1981, the French retired at over 64 years old. Today, we are at 62.8 years on average while life expectancy has increased. In total, we gained eight more years of retirement that were not funded. A one-year postponement of the retirement age saves around 9 billion euros, with an efficiency of 75% because some seniors find themselves unemployed or on disability.
Faced with this observation, when we have spent so much with the “whatever the cost”, some wonder why we could not continue… For the government, this reform is important because it constitutes a political marker, and that it will reassure the markets which will remember that France has carried out a good reform for its competitiveness. But it is particularly difficult to carry out in France, whereas in other countries, working until the age of 64 or 65 poses much less difficulty.
Why is this point so sensitive in France?
By shifting the retirement age, we touch on an element of French identity. Our country is marked by old conflicts, with a population quite divided on many issues. Those who built post-war France had the idea of creating a common cement with a model of social protection far ahead of its time. Reaching the starting age is thus perceived as an attack against a differentiating element compared to the rest of the world. Today, our country is in difficulty on many subjects (health system, purchasing power, cost of energy, etc.) and the postponement of the retirement age is seen as a further deterioration in the situation. If later retirement is inexorable, the feeling of dispossession is high. One solution would be to put the social partners back to work. Indeed, they have shown in the past that they know how to manage supplementary pension schemes.
Symbolically, would it be better to extend the contribution period?
Politically, it might seem easier. It is also interesting to observe that the postponement of the age is perceived as a right-wing measure, and the lengthening of the contribution period as a left-wing measure. But the first is twice as effective as the second.
How can the government compensate for this measure perceived as a social setback with “social” measures?
Several avenues are mentioned, on small pensions, hardship, employment of seniors… But some subjects are complicated to deal with. Let’s take the arduousness: should we have a reflection upstream and avoid that the trades are painful or enter into a restorative logic? Another complex subject: what is a difficult job? The arduousness account turned out to be a gas plant. It might be in our interest to return to a system like the one that existed with the Woerth law [NDLR un certain taux d’invalidité permettait de partir plus tôt], and to combine this with an active hardship prevention policy. On the other hand, the situation of women is generally absent from the debates. Let’s not forget that in 89% of cases, they are the ones who receive the survivor’s pension and they can become very poor. It is imperative to modernize the current system of reversion which is now out of breath.