Lhe fate of the pension reform is still far from being sealed. After a hasty and chaotic reading in the National Assembly, the text will now be the subject of a debate in the Senate, punctuated by a day, at the call of the unions, to “bring France to a standstill” March 7, promise of an intensification of mobilizations against the project. Day after day, the story of this national psychodrama is woven without anyone being able to predict the outcome.
However, two certainties already emerge. The first is that this reform, given the degree of rejection it arouses in public opinion, will inevitably lead to deep frustration and resentment which does not bode well for the social and political cohesion of the country. The second is that, even if the reform were to see the light of day, its financial ambitions have already been so amputated by the concessions granted by the government, that it seems inevitable to put the work of pensions back on the job by the end of end of the decade.
Since the implementation, just forty years ago, of the 82e of the 110 proposals of the candidate François Mitterrand providing for the lowering of the legal retirement age from 65 to 60, France, like Sisyphus, finds itself condemned to constantly push back the enormous rock of financing, by multiplying the reforms: Balladur (1993), Fillon (2003), Woerth (2010), Touraine (2014), not to mention that, aborted, of Juppé (1995) and the unsuccessful attempt of 2019.
Far from definitively resolving the problems, each new reform only reveals a little more the impasse in which the system is engaged. As the efforts required become increasingly heavy with regard to demographic and budgetary trajectories, their acceptability is less and less obvious.
A gigantic misunderstanding about the distribution
The number of levers to make the financing of our pay-as-you-go system sustainable is limited to three: the retirement age, the amount of contributions paid by active workers and the level of pension paid to retirees. The potential to move these sliders can only diminish as the variables in the equation deteriorate.
Reconciling the objectives of equity and efficiency becomes mission impossible in a country which has ended up convincing itself that“the state must solve each problem without us making the slightest collective effort”, as written the political scientist Chloe Morin in We will have tried everything (Fayard, 400 pages, 20.90 euros). And everyone to convince themselves that the best reform is the one we didn’t make.
You have 57.32% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.