We thought the pensions file had been buried. Charred by article 49-3 used by Elisabeth Borne last spring to adopt the reform establishing the postponement of the retirement age from 62 to 64 years. And now the subject comes back through the back door. At the start, a banal affair of big money. A dark story of budgetary plumbing, which over the days is becoming a real political and social bomb. The social partners – employee unions and employers – are up in arms, like a good part of the LR and the left. Even Marine Le Pen recently took part in a forum denouncing “illegitimate and unreasonable looting” on the part of the government.
The object of this sling? Agirc-Arrco and the executive’s plan to draw from the coffers of this scheme between 1 to 3 billion euros per year by 2030. An amendment could be included in the PLFSS, the financing bill of Social Security, the examination of which begins in the coming days. Organized hold-up, denounce the union organizations. At the CGT, Sophie Binet speaks of a red line. Medef and its new president Patrick Martin, who supported the government last spring during the pensions fight, sees this as an act of betrayal.
On July 12, at the end of a meeting lasting more than two hours with all the unions and employers’ organizations, Elisabeth Borne nevertheless promised to reweave the links of social dialogue, affirming that she would leave “all their room for dialogue to the social partners “. Better still, she committed to faithfully transposing into law the agreements they could reach between them. “The drain on Agirc-Arrco is a major political mistake,” denounces Michel Beaugas, the Force Ouvrière negotiator.
A war chest of 68 billion euros
Agirc-Arrco is the supplementary pension scheme for all private sector employees, with just over 20 million contributors and 13 million pensions paid each month, for an amount of nearly 80 billion euros. per year. On average, this supplementary pension represents between 30 and 40% of the total pension, a share which rises up to 60% for executives. This regime, one of the last pillars of French parity, is managed directly by the social partners. If the accounts of the general retirement system – managed directly by the State – are crimson red, those of Agirc-Arrco are largely profitable, with a surplus of more than 5 billion euros this year. Above all, the regime has in its coffers a war chest accumulated over the years, which reaches the tidy sum of 68 billion euros!
Arguing for this good financial health, the managers of Agirc-Arrco decided, around ten days ago, to increase the pension of private sector retirees by 4.9% from November 1 and to put an end to the system. penalty that had existed for years. “This agreement calls into question the objective of returning to balance in the global retirement system and thereby, that of reducing the public deficit by the end of the five-year term, when the debt peaks at 3,000 billion euros and interest rates rise. I call for responsibility,” thunders Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci, very close to Emmanuel Macron. Same story on the side of Matignon, where we insist on the fact that “It is not only up to the State to show itself responsible”. For the government, Agirc-Arrco will directly benefit from the reform passed last spring: raising the starting age means more contributors, and fewer pensions to pay. That is to say a surplus of more than a billion euros in the coffers by 2026. “The irony of history is that the social partners do not want us to recover this surplus, which is a direct consequence of our political choices”, slips a member of the government. A gift from heaven that the executive hopes to capture to finance, in particular, the increase in the minimum pension.
One-way solidarity
The problem? This surplus comes from contributions from private sector employees. “It does not belong to the State. Why do you want only private sector employees to finance the deficits of the civil servants’ system?”, annoys one of the leaders of Agirc-Arrco. The unions, for their part, did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: a billion euros taken, that’s 1% less increase in value for private sector retirees. Above all, the argument according to which the supplementary pension scheme must come to the aid of the general scheme does not pass. After all, in 2014, when Agirc-Arrco was on the verge of bankruptcy with a hole in the coffers of more than 5 billion euros, the social partners at the time requested state aid. In vain. They were then forced to take draconian measures to replenish the accounts: deindexation, introduction of a penalty… In short, there is no question that solidarity only works in one direction…
So here at Matignon, we find ourselves with a bomb on our hands, a few days before the social conference on low wages, on October 16. Enough to see the trade union organizations stiffen up and take advantage of it to toughen up the negotiations… “Agirc-Arrco does not put us in the best position, that’s certain, blows a minister who knows the subject well. This will create a context particular, not to say a psychodrama, and potentially call into question the entire course of the day of October 16. Honestly, there is no way through.” In short, we had better timing. However, “the Prime Minister is perfectly calm and we must completely uncorrelate the Agirc-Arrco from the social conference”, we officially plead in the entourage of Élisabeth Borne, leaving other ministers familiar with the matter perplexed .
The threat of censorship
How the hell to get out of this very poorly embarked affair? The outcome is, for the moment, not arbitrated. Emmanuel Macron, straight in his boots, assumes to go through with the maneuver: “They prefer irresponsibility to solidarity”, he said in the Council of Ministers, this Wednesday, on the subject of the social partners, in particular the Medef. Matignon is much more hesitant. “Paralyzed,” whispers a full-time minister.
Behind the scenes, the Prime Minister is increasing discussions, to find “a way out in dialogue”. But in the event of disagreement, Matignon warns: “If we cannot find the savings here, we will have to look for them elsewhere.” Not simple: Bruno Le Maire does not want to hear about tax increases. It is difficult, however, to imagine the executive going through with its project against the advice of all the union organizations. “I have the feeling that they are going to give up,” predicts a Renaissance MP, a specialist in public finance issues. “Forcing the thing through an amendment to the PLFSS would be explosive.”
And for good reason: a degraded relationship with the social partners is not the only sword of Damocles levitating over the head of Élisabeth Borne and the government. In Bercy, where Bruno Le Maire is doing his best to convince his European partners and the rating agencies of France’s budgetary seriousness and the credibility of its promises, this budgetary blunder comes at a bad time. “This counts towards public spending in the sense of Maastricht, so it loses us a billion in terms of Europe,” regrets a minister.
Even more serious: the PLFSS having to be adopted with the magic card of 49-3, the subject offers a new opportunity to the Republicans in the National Assembly to wave the red rag of the motion of censure to bring down the government. “Let the LRs not give us lessons on the trajectories of public finances,” grumble those around Élisabeth Borne. Lesson or not, the LRs, even divided on the question, will have the means to press the button and, above all, to be followed at least by the Nupes and the National Rally. Agirc-Arrco: when a nebulous acronym can sound the death knell for the government.