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Close-up on one of the economic issues of the presidential election: should the retirement age be delayed as recommended by President Macron and two other of his right-wing rivals? The question is debated.
The French can now leave at 62, if they have accumulated enough quarters of contributions. And according to the latest poll by the Elabe Institute, a very large majority of them, 69%, are opposed to a reform delaying the retirement age. Emmanuel Macron and Valérie Pécresse want to postpone it to 65 years old, Éric Zemmour for the radical right to 64 years old. On the other hand, the other candidate of the radical right, Marine Le Pen, wants on the contrary to push back the age of the end of the active life to 60 years, just like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the radical left. And then there are those who do not want to change anything: the ecologist Yannick Jadot, for example, or the socialist Anne Hidalgo.
Both believe that this reform is not necessary
They are based on the projections of the Pensions Orientation Council. According to the sages consulted by the government for any decision concerning old-age coverage, the pension system is certainly in deficit today, but it will be in balance within thirty years. This may seem surprising, since with the aging of the population, there will be more retirees, but this inflationary demographic slope for the costs of the system is corrected by the many reforms already in place. Reforms seeking to curb the rise in pensions, they are increasingly poorly indexed to the evolution of prices, and to delay the effective retirement age. This real age already exceeds the legal age today, the French retire on average nine months after their 62nd birthday. And that will automatically be later and later, because they started working later than their elders and because they will have to accumulate ever more quarters of contributions.
The budgetary argument of the supporters of a longer working life, a false debate?
If the pension system was improved, he would earn 21 billion euros over ten years, according to the team of the president-candidate. On the other hand, the unemployment insurance system could suffer. France is one of the European countries where the activity rate of the over 55s is the lowest, less than one in two still has a job, while the European average is 60%. However, if future retirees spend the last years of their active life unemployed, they will contribute less, so they will receive a lower pension. From the point of view of employees, this reform is a double penalty.
Proponents of the postponement also put forward the demographic argument
The French, it’s true, live longer and longer, so they will enjoy their retirement longer, even if they leave later, which will cost more. But in practice, experts are interested in healthy lifespan. However, today it is about ten years for men and a dozen for women. In ten years, the French have gained a year of fit life. If their retirement is delayed by three years, they will therefore lose two years of healthy retired life. And mortality being largely correlated with the standard of living, the most penalized will be the poorest. A third of them die today before the age of 65. They will not even have the time to enjoy one of the historic rights of employees.
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