Ddemographics and immigration: there are no less than two taboo subjects in the debate on pension reform. The first, demography, is mostly rejected by opponents of the very principle of a reform. They pretend to believe that an aging France with a declining birth rate can act as if nothing had happened. Noting that the ratio between working people and retirees has gone from 2 contributors for one retiree in 2004 to 1.7 in 2019 and should fall to 1.5 in 2040 does not induce a value judgment on the relevance or the socially fair or not the reform desired by the President of the Republic.
Chance of the calendar, the publication of the demographic report of INSEE, Tuesday January 17, in full controversy on the pensions, highlights the fragility of our precious system by distribution based on the solidarity between active and retired, in other words between generations. The historically low level of the natural balance (the excess of births over deaths), unprecedented since 1945, and the accelerated growth of the percentage of over 65s in the population (21%) clearly weigh on the future. of the pension system.
“The babies of 2023 are the contributors of 2043”notes the National Union of Family Associations, which is asking the government to relaunch “family policy”in particular by creating a “public childcare service”. But the reminder of statistical realities cannot be limited to a political argument of circumstance. By effectively projecting public opinion into future decades, the pension reform project clearly puts the fate of future generations at stake.
Decades of occultation
The question of immigration flows is the second taboo that weighs on the ongoing controversies on pensions, and especially on demography itself. The government, while it is preparing a bill, one of the sections of which provides for the establishment of a “short-term job” residence permit intended to allow the regularization of undocumented foreign workers, is struggling to take on the dimension demographic and contributory.
To convince the right, which threatens to refuse to vote for the text, the executive is working to minimize its scope. ” Our commitment [est] to have recourse to non-Community economic immigration only in a subsidiary way”insists Gérald Darmanin in Le Figaro. To attract the left, which is calling for regularizations but rejecting the repressive part of the bill intended to facilitate deportations to the border, the same Minister of the Interior entrusts the Monde : “Perhaps we don’t give enough residence permits to people who work and that some employers use as a reserve army, to speak like Marx. »
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