The executive will not find his little ones there… After the projections of the Pensions Orientation Council (COR), experts seem to moderate the immediate seriousness of the state pension system. The Pension Monitoring Committee (CSR), made up of a handful of experts appointed by the government, has just submitted a much-awaited copy. And surprise, the tone of this note published this Thursday is clearly less clear-cut than the diagnosis made by the executive. If the French pension system presents a “risk” of deficits, the experts do not favor an age measurement, as provided for in the reform desired by Emmanuel Macron.
A week after the COR’s conclusions, which predict a rapid and lasting return to deficits, the terms used by the CSR are weighed and less dramatic: they write in fact that they take note of a “risk of significant residual imbalances at short and medium term”.
In addition, they are careful not to recommend THE solution to deal with it. “It is not up to us to select a single way” to solve the equation, they specify. For them, the decision “is a matter of consultation between the various stakeholders and, ultimately, of politics”. Lines that could have been written by the CFDT in particular. Laurent Berger’s union, which is today directly opposed to the scenario of an acceleration of the reform (with a passage by amendment to the Social Security financing bill), is indeed calling for dialogue and time to put all the options on the table…
The option of “contribution increases”
The opinion therefore lists several avenues, “it being understood that none of the scenarios can be painless for the entire population”. An increase in social contributions or “other types of levies” (set aside during previous reforms), but demanded for ages by all the unions, is thus not ruled out: “this debate is to be opened” , even judges the CSR, given the growing “pressure” “in favor of increased redistributivity”.
Similarly, the under-revaluation of pensions, which “remains an adjustment option”, rather favored by the Medef in particular, on condition of being “combined with protective measures for low pensions” for the CSR, would also deserve to be be put on the table. But this option, recognizes the CSR, “poses the problem of having been mobilized a lot”. As for a possible increase in the legal age or the contribution period, it would be necessary to “assume” that this “could lead to a further decline in the average duration of retirement”, points out the CSR.
This approach could be justified by “presenting it as the price to pay” for not increasing contributions or “reducing the standard of living” of retirees, or as a means of “redeploying budgetary resources” towards “other economic needs and social,” they say. Clearly, to allow the state to bring money into the coffers and finance other reforms. The resident of the Republic has also begun to develop this argument by emphasizing the need to free up budgetary margins.