The repeal of the pension reform would cost public finances 20 billion euros

The National Rally’s bill to repeal the pension reform has been deemed admissible by the National Assembly’s bureau. But in addition to the budget that this would represent, another headache is looming for Michel Barnier.

What a political imbroglio is the RN’s bill to repeal the pension reform: as the Assembly’s office is majority left-wing, and the RN does not have the right to vote to be recognized as admissible, this bill from the National Rally benefited from the support of the New Popular Front…

It was deemed admissible by the bureau of the Assembly on Wednesday, September 18, and the text will go to committee before arriving in the chamber on October 31. Enough to give Michel Barnier a few cold sweats, especially since the La France insoumise group has also planned to use its parliamentary niche to submit its own bill in November, also to eliminate the Macron reform!

The new Prime Minister has said little on the subject, but he has said he is ready to make adjustments to the reform. But he is absolutely not in favour of its abolition, because a repeal would be very costly, several billion euros.

We don’t have very precise figures, and the calculators are heating up, but the economist Marc Ferracci, a member of parliament for the central bloc who based his calculations on the data from the government’s impact study, is very pessimistic. If we repeal the reform in its entirety, that is to say if we eliminate everything – the so-called “salty” measures, such as the increase in the retirement age, but also the so-called “sweet” measures such as long career schemes or the revaluation of small pensions – he estimates that it would cost the public finances 15 to 17 billion per year. According to the economist, we would lose revenue, contributions and taxes that come in, but there would also be additional expenses, because we would have to pay additional pensions, since people would retire before the age of 64.

If we only remove the “salty” measures, i.e. the age reduction; but we keep the “sweet” measures, it is important to adjust this figure, because this is probably what the RN or the NFP will ask for. The bill would rise to 20 billion euros per year, by 2030.

In the context of budgetary tensions that we know about, depriving ourselves of 20 billion euros per year seems a little complicated. It would mean finding money elsewhere, perhaps by increasing taxes further, which would not fail to fuel the debate even more.