Opponents of the reform dispute the need to “work longer” advocated by the government. According to them, there is an alternative to this project which penalizes the most modest and only involves assets.
by Bertrand Bissuel
In the elements of language hammered by the executive, everything suggests that there is no alternative: to “save” our pension system, “we must gradually work longer”. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said it in a Interview granted to the Parisian , on December 2, 2022, registering in line of a rhetoric developed for more than a year by Emmanuel Macron. The privileged scenario today by the ruling team is to postpone the age from which the pension can start to be paid.
Will the cursor be pushed from 62 to 64 years or up to 65, in accordance with a campaign commitment from the Head of State? This unknown should be lifted on Tuesday, January 10, when the government will reveal the main lines of its project.
But the option, which will ultimately be chosen, already arouses – and will continue to arouse – the controversy, all the unions and the left parties being hostile, as well as the extreme right and some individuals on the right. Opponents of the reform criticize Emmanuel Macron and Elisabeth Borne to blacken the table to justify painful measures, which penalize the most modest and only put the assets to contribution, while there are others Solutions.
In this debate mined on a complex theme, several questions are raised. What is the inventory, first of all? The latest report from the Pension Orientation Council (CR), published in September 2022, shows that the prospects are not good, even if they “do not validate the merits of speeches that highlight the idea of An uncontrolled dynamic of retirement expenses “. The system has returned to surpluses in 2021 (+ 900 million euros) and should be maintained in green in 2022 (+ 3.2 billion euros). However, the balance between revenue and expenses should become negative again from 2023 and on a more or less long period of time depending on the hypotheses spent.
In the most favorable option, the deficit would be absorbed “around the mid -2030s”, according to the COR. But if we take as an agreement that which corresponds to the current rules and uses, the return to the flotation line would be more distant: in the mid -2050s. Above all, it would only occur in the most optimistic configuration, with productivity of + 1.6 % per year. If this growth rate was + 0.7 % (the average value observed on 2009-2019) or even + 1 %, the accounts would be constantly in red.
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