“Why do so many French people (…) want to leave work so much?”: the question will have to be raised during the conference on work and pensions, said on Tuesday the Minister of Labor, Jean-Pierre Farandou, who also plans to open the question of the financing of Social Security in 2026.
Within the framework of the suspension of the criticized pension reform, adopted in 2023, the Government will launch this conference “at the end of November” in the presence of unions and employers, with the hope that this time an agreement will be reached between the social partners on the future of the system.
“I think there is a path towards an agreement,” said the new Minister of Labor, Jean-Pierre Farandou, before the Senate’s Social Affairs Committee. This conference “will examine the different types of regime” and address different topics (“classifications”, “difficulties”, etc.), he assured.
“The French resist”
“The job, put very simply, is to answer the question ‘Why do so many French people, of any profession, between 60 and 62 years old, want to leave work so much?'” announced the Minister of Labor.
This conference, for which neither the calendar nor the operation is currently known, “will not be a second conclave, nor a place for negotiation. (…) It is a place for debate, a place for expressing opinions, for listening to experts,” added Farandou.
Review Social Security financing?
Beyond pensions, the minister raised the possibility of a review starting in 2026 of the entire Social Security system, which has just celebrated its 80th anniversary. “We asked ourselves if at the beginning of the 26th we would not open the substantive issue of social security financing,” he stated.
For Jean-Pierre Farandou, “we must therefore have the courage to address this monument”, if “the two chambers (of Parliament) and the social partners tell us that we must take the bull by the horns.”
Source: BFM TV
