At Matignon, the Prime Minister, ELisabeth Borne will find the file on her desk. Pension reform, already highly contested, is one of Emmanuel Macron’s priorities for this second five-year term. Eco guest of franceinfo Monday, May 16, Antoine Foucher, president of Quintet Conseil, and former chief of staff of Muriel Pénicaud, Minister of Labour, believes that the new government will have to “tell the truth“.
For the architect of the “work” ordinances of 2017, “pension reform is absolutely essential“: “We are one of the countries in the world that spends the most on its seniors – 14% of GDP – and we are one of the countries in the world that pays its teachers the least. These are collective choices (…) Spending more and more on pensions is a societal choice that has never been put on the table. Is this the best way to prepare for the future?“
On the other hand, for Antoine Foucher, the new team will have to think about the method used and the modalities of the reform. On the method, he advises to “debate, to accept contradiction, to agree to change your mind when good arguments are opposed to the government, not to do marketing, not to com“.
On the substance and the terms of the reform, Antoine Foucher suggests another avenue than raising the legal retirement age: “make everyone work a little longer“. Concretely, he explains, “for now, to retire, you must have worked for 41.5 years. In ten years, fifteen years, it will be 43 years. Can’t it be 43 years old a little earlier than in fifteen years? Can’t we all work a little more, no matter what age we started?“