The amendment, tabled by Senator Les Républicains Jean-François Husson, was adopted with 163 “pour» et 126 «against». CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT / AFP
The government declared itself unfavorable to the amendment defended by Les Républicains.
The Senate, with a majority on the right, voted Sunday in favor of the launch of a study on the addition of a dose of collective capitalization in the pay-as-you-go system, during the examination of the pension reform. The funded system provides that employees and employers invest their contributions in investment funds, stocks, bonds, etc. Upon retirement, the employee receives a pension linked to the past performance of these investments.
The amendment, tabled by Senator Les Républicains Jean-François Husson, was adopted with 163 “pour» et 126 «against“. The senators demand that the report be submitted by the government to Parliament before October. “The demographic movement is relentless, we will have fewer contributors and more beneficiaries, we have this duty to look at how the distribution system continues“, explained Jean-François Husson in the hemicycle. “It is an issue of social justice, it is first of all the remuneration of the most modest who will benefit from it“, he assured.
The left opposed it. “You don’t trust this pay-as-you-go system so much anymore that you want to see capitalization systems coming“, criticized the socialist Monique Lubin. “It is a question of delivering hundreds of billions to pension funds, to the market“, was indignant the ecologist Raymonde Poncet-Monge, believing that the pay-as-you-go system was the most supportive and effective.
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“Verbal Diarrhea”
LR Group President Bruno Retailleau explained: “We could have a three-stage rocket: the intergenerational base (of the pay-as-you-go system), the second stage is supplementary pensions and the last stage is by capitalization“. Communists and environmentalists scoffed at this metaphor, recalling that in a rocket the first stage “is the first to be abandoned“, in favor of the rise of the last.
Élisabeth Doineau (UDI), the general rapporteur, expressed an unfavorable opinion on the report, but considered the question “interesting», car «the younger generations do not believe in the financing of our system“. The Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt also said he was unfavorable: “The government has chosen not to open the debate on capitalization». «No one can reasonably say that there can be no debate on this funded system“, he added, however.
The various speakers were delighted that the debate was lively, after a section on Saturday on special diets marked by the omnipresence of the left and the silence of the right. “Some are cured of their verbal diarrhea, others of their silent occlusion“, quipped René-Paul Savary, the LR rapporteur for the old age branch.
In the afternoon, the senators almost unanimously adopted the amendments to delete an article, added by the government after the passage of the text in the National Assembly. It provided for the submission of a report, within a year, on thepossibility, conditions and timetable for the implementation of a universal system“, the points system that the abandoned reform of 2019 established. “It’s a Macron amendment“, lashed Patrick Kanner, the president of the socialist senators. “Why this articleis reflected in today’s project? “It’s almost a signed felony».
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