The first subject of opposition between the projects of Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the pension reform. The finalists both advocate a very important change: for the France Insoumise party, it is a return of the legal retirement age to 60 at the full rate, against 62 today, while for the party of presidential majority, the will is to push back the legal age to 65 or 64 years.
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For the Macron camp, pushing back the age is a necessity to balance the accounts of the pension system, whose deficit is 10 billion euros this year, but also to finance the social model. For the Nupes, the return to retirement at age 60 would generate expenditure, 20 billion euros according to the calculations of the Nupes but much more, according to certain economists. The latter assumes and says that it will finance them by an increase in pension contributions but also taxes on the richest.
In any case, the two camps propose to improve the standard of living of pensioners. For Nupes, the minimum pension would be increased to 1,500 euros net for a full career against 1,100 euros on the side of Ensemble!, Emmanuel Macron’s party. Retirees will see their pensions increased by 4% from July, after 1% at the start of the year. Remember that today the average amount of a retirement pension is 1,400 euros net.
Both also promise to fight inflation. La Nupes by Jean-Luc Mélenchon promises a price freeze on a basket of food and hygiene products or even clothing. The price per liter of gasoline would also be blocked at 1.40 euros. A set of measures considered difficult to implement by many economists because if prices are blocked, manufacturers will no longer produce these products, because for them it amounts to working at a loss, and therefore in the end, it generates shortages.
For its part, the party Together! of Emmanuel Macron has already undertaken to extend the tariff shield on energy, for gas and electricity, which corresponds neither more nor less to a price freeze until the end of the year. For fuels, the government will extend the reduction of 18 euro cents per liter beyond July 31. Which is very costly for the state. On the other hand, for the shopping basket, no tariff shield on food products, but the payment at the start of the school year of a check, probably for a hundred euros for the most modest.