It is music that has been rising since the start of the debate on pension reform in the National Assembly and which has now reached its high point in the Senate: the birth rate as a solution to recover the balance of the pay-as-you-go system. In a France whose population is slowly declining (1.8 children per woman in 2022), although still higher than that of its European neighbours, the specter of demographic decline is coming back to haunt political discourse. This theme, right and extreme right relaunched it together.
At the National Rally, there are countless admirers of the pronatalist policy implemented in Hungary by Viktor Orban, it is defended as a choice, a means of avoiding recourse to immigration. On the right, the leader of the senators Les Républicains (LR), Bruno Retailleau, assumes: “The demographic question is an ideological question, because to finance a pay-as-you-go scheme, it’s either more children or more immigrants. » The equation, validated by all demographers, is posed.
After unsuccessful attempts by LR deputies in the Assembly – an amendment to lower the general social contribution (CSG) on the income from the activity of mothers, another to target aid from the first child – it is in the Senate that the right will fight. Majority with the support of the centrists, it conditions its support for the reform to strong measures for the “mothers”. The leader of the LR senators intends to introduce a 5% premium for mothers of at least two children with a full career from the age of 63. These women contribute to the balance of the regime thanks to their children and are penalized by chopped careers, believes Mr. Retailleau, optimistic enough to slip this amendment into the basket of marriage with the government.
“Let go of our wombs!” »
What does it matter if, as the demographer Hervé Le Bras points out, acting on the birth rate now will only have an effect in twenty years. The debate is launched, and it meets for the moment only a tenuous response among the macronists and on the left. In the government, we are inclined to display a listening ear to the demands of the right. At the Assembly on February 15, Gabriel Attal, for whom family policy is not a “taboo”greeted the « combat » LR deputies, without retaining their amendments. At the Ministry for Equality between Women and Men, the Minister, Isabelle Rome, confided in mid-February that the pronatalist vision of the right, “It’s a bit of politics from another time”. Consistent with the liberal approach of the presidential camp on societal issues, Mme Rome argued that “the birth rate is not a public policy issue. What matters to me is that women in our society have the freedom to choose”.
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