What is being said in France about Macroni’s disputed pension reform?
From next Friday the pension reform in France, which has caused clashes and demonstrations for months throughout the country, will come into effect. For Macron and his executive it is necessary to prevent the deficit of the pension system by 2030, but they are not all in complete agreement. Facts and comments from the French press
Since the “mad parliamentary day” in mid-March, as Libération called it, in which French President Emmanuel Macron “jumped” a branch of parliament to pass the disputed pension reform, five months have passed and now the law is about to enter into force .
It will in fact be effective from 1 September, despite the violent protests that have taken place for months in the streets of Paris and throughout the country.
Here's what changes and what they say in France.
MONTHS OF CHAOS ENDED WITH THE “MACRON DICTATORSHIP”
The enactment of France's unpopular pension reform that raises the retirement age to 64 comes after months of union mobilization, million-strong marches, chaotic sittings in the National Assembly where it was impossible vote, a confused communication from the government and, finally, the adoption of the law made possible only with the hard fist of Macron, who resorted to paragraph 3 of article 49 of the Constitution, a special power that allows to avoid the parliamentary debate.
WHY IT IS NECESSARY ACCORDING TO MACRON
The decision to resort to this extraordinary measure in order to get the reform approved was justified by Macron by indicating " financial risks ".
Without the reform, according to the tenant of the Elysée, the inflationary context, the increase in interest rates and the fever of the financial markets would jeopardize the future of France. “My political interest would have been to go to the vote. Among all of you, it's not me who is risking my job or chair", he would have said in those excited days to his ministers, "but I believe that, at present, the financial and economic risks are too high […] We cannot play with the future of the country".
WILL IT BE RESOLUTIVE?
Already at the time of the protests , many experts argued that France is not going through a financial crisis of the magnitude described by Macron and that, therefore, there were no conditions to justify the use of special powers, which indeed would have only contributed to damaging the his image. To date, according to polls reported by Les Echos , the trust of the French in their president has not dropped from 29% for two months and also the percentage of those who do not trust it remains unchanged at 65%, while those who say they do not trust it is 40% of the population.
But the Conseil d'orientation des retraites (COR), an independent and pluralistic advisory and consultation body, which includes the social partners, has been charged with analyzing and monitoring the medium and long-term prospects of the system. pension scheme) which in June – and therefore “in retrospect!” L'Observateur underlines – stated that the reform “will not prevent the general pension scheme from going into deficit by 2030”. The opposite of what the Macron government claims to justify the "mother of reforms".
THE FORECASTS OF THE COR
However, there is one "but". In fact, according to the forecasts of the COR, although the reform is not able to achieve the objective of the executive, without it "the situation would be worse" because by slowing down the pace of retirement it limits the number of pensioners (280,000 fewer pensioners in 2030 compared to the scenario without the reform) and therefore makes it possible to contain expenditure.
The most possible scenario hypothesized in June by the COR foresees that: “After two years of surpluses, France's pension system will go back into deficit from 2024. Until 2030, the deficit would be between 0.2 and 0.3 points of GDP, i.e. between 5 and 8 billion euros per year. However, this is less than half of the previous forecast, which predicted a deficit of 0.4% of GDP in the absence of reforms”.
Forecasts which, observes Bfmtv , have attracted criticism from some members of the government, who question the reliability of the COR's work. First of all the Economy Minister, Bruno Le Maire, who, criticizing the body for having changed its assessments "every six months", said he was taking these forecasts "with caution".
WHAT THE PENSION REFORM IN FRANCE PROVIDES
So what are the most relevant points of the pension reform in France? As Le Figaro explains, the main measure is the gradual raising of the retirement age, which will go from 62 today to 64 in 2030, at a rate of three months a year.
There will also be an immediate increase of 100 euros gross per month in the minimum pension for employees, merchants and farmers who have worked all their lives with a minimum wage and full time.
The "long career" scheme, which allows early retirement to those who started working at a young age, has also been revised and will now be open to those who started working before the age of 21 (instead of 20) and will have four age limits for access compared to the current two.
Finally, among other measures, according to the website of the French administration, there is the possibility for some parents to increase the amount of their pension by 1.25% for each additional quarter worked between the ages of 63 and 64, i.e. say 2.5% for two quarters and up to 5% for a full year.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cosa-si-dice-in-francia-della-contestata-riforma-macroniana-delle-pensioni/ on Mon, 28 Aug 2023 11:04:02 +0000.