The French government unveiled its pension reform on Tuesday, the flagship measure of which will be the extension of the retirement age to 64, against 62 today, which augurs intense demonstrations.
“We suggest that those who can work longer […] This choice is also the one made by all our European neighbors,” announced Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne during a televised address. The project plans to increase the legal age gradually until 2030, until it reaches 64 years.
“I am well aware that changing our pension system raises fears and questions among the French. We want to respond and convince,” she continued, defending her government’s “ambition for justice and progress”.
The eight main unions should call for a first day of demonstrations and strikes on January 19 in the face of this plan to which President Emmanuel Macron had committed himself from the campaign for his first term and which is one of the crucial reforms of his second term, for which he does not have a clear majority in Parliament.
Elisabeth Borne also said she was ready to “further develop” the reform “thanks to a loyal and constructive parliamentary debate”.
The leader of the far right Marine Le Pen reacted by saying she wanted to “block” “an” unjust reform “, while the radical left party La France insoumise denounced a” serious social regression “. »
“We return to what our elders knew, that is to say that after work, it is the cemetery”, had denounced the boss of the CGT union, Philippe Martinez. According to the French Institute of Statistics, a quarter of the poorest men have already died at 62.
France has experienced a series of major reforms of its pension systems over the past thirty years, almost all accompanied by major social movements, to respond to the financial deterioration of its funds and the aging of the population.
For every Frenchman aged 65 and over, there are currently 2.6 aged between 20 and 64.
But they will be only 2.25 in 2030 and less than 2 in 2040, which jeopardizes the so-called “pay-as-you-go” retirement model, in which the contributions of active people fairly pay the pensions of retirees.
The pension reform also plans to accelerate the extension of the contribution period, advancing to 2027 the requirement of 43 years of contributions for a full pension instead of 2035, according to the government press kit.
In exchange, the minimum pension will be increased for all retirees, current or future, announced Ms. Borne.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest, without the pension systems being completely comparable. It’s 65 in Germany, Belgium or Spain, 67 in Denmark according to the Center for European and International Social Security Liaison, a French public body.
But age measurement remains highly unpopular. More than two-thirds of French people (68%) are against the postponement to 64, according to an Ifop-Fiducial poll.
Unemployed before retirement
“From the age of 50, it is difficult for someone to find a job. So what will he do from 50 to 65? For 15 years, he will remain a job seeker before retiring, ”notes Emmanuel, an entrepreneur interviewed by AFP in Versailles, in the Paris suburbs.
In parliament, the French government hopes to rally the elected representatives of the moderate right (Les Républicains-LR), whose boss Eric Ciotti has already said he is ready to “vote a fair reform”.
The text will be examined in the Council of Ministers on January 23, while the left-wing Nupes coalition is holding a meeting on Tuesday and January 17 and La France insoumise (LFI – radical left) has already planned to demonstrate on the 21st.
“I think we have a good balance of power,” said the president of the LFI group in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot.
The bill must pass in committee at the National Assembly from January 30, and in the hemicycle on February 6.
On Saturday, the “yellow vests” – whose weekly rallies for more than a year had strongly marked Emmanuel Macron’s first term – tried to remobilise.
Only 4,700 people, including 2,000 in Paris, according to the Ministry of the Interior, were present for this first rally, punctuated by songs hostile to the French president, but without the violence which had marred the movement from the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2020.