Will pension reform soon cost more than it will bring? Between support measures, concessions to the opposition and various amendments, the expected budget gain continues to melt.
It is recalled that the current reform should make it possible to save around 18,000 million in the pension insurance scheme by 2030.
A plan that should, according to the Pension Guidance Council (COR), if nothing is done, present a very significant deficit of more than 13,000 million euros. And still it is quite an optimistic scenario with an unemployment rate of 4.5% (7.3% today).
So on paper, with our 18,000 million euros of savings, we offset the deficit and even created room for maneuver to invest in health or the energy transition, as was the ambition of candidate Macron during his re-election in 2022.
35% of savings vanished
Except that the economies of the reform do not stop diminishing. According to Nicolas Sarkozy’s former social adviser, Raymond Soubie, 35% of the potential profits have already vanished.
First with the support measures announced by the Prime Minister herself in January. Financing for early retirement due to disability or disability represents more than 3,000 million euros. The financing of the “long career” system and the revaluation of pensions to 85% of the Smic are estimated at 1,700 million euros. Finally, the increase in current pensions is estimated at an additional 1,000 million euros.
At this point, the return to equilibrium of the system in 2030 already seems compromised.
Especially since it may not be over. Because the government will have to count on the votes of nearly two thirds of the Republican deputies to aspire to approve its reform in the Assembly. However, the LRs are not stingy with public spending.
Among the approximately fifteen amendments proposed or supported by the group, we can mention the extension of the “long career” system to those over 20 years of age. A measure whose cost is estimated between 1,200 and 2,000 million euros. Or the reduction to 66 years of the age in which the bonus is suppressed for women who have had 2 children instead of 67. A proposal that is not quantified but that would inflate the final grade.
At Matignon we pull our hair out and say stop. The risk in the end is to approve an unpopular reform that, moreover, does not solve the problem of the deficit.
What is almost registered is that this reform should not be the last. See you in 2028.
Source: BFM TV
