According to his "explanatory memorandum", the bill (64 articles) creating a universal pension system, by points, aims to replace the current system deemed "unfair, complex, difficult to read" and to facilitate " professional mobility ”at a time when individuals change jobs more often than before, sometimes in the private, public or entrepreneurship. Which leads today, at the end of his career, to a real headache to calculate pensions.
After nearly 18 months of consultation with the social partners, a month and a half of strong protest in the street and still many oppositions and questions that persist, the text of the reform arrives this Monday in front of the deputies. As the special committee was unable to complete its work on the main aspect (ordinary law), parliamentarians will have to resume consideration of all the amendments from the start.
A universal scheme for workers born after 1975
The future system will cover "all people working in France, without exception": employees in the private sector and in special schemes, civil servants, magistrates, soldiers, farmers, self-employed workers, etc. All workers born from 1975 will contribute to a new " National Universal Pension Fund ”which will oversee the 42 existing plans - before, perhaps, absorbing them. "The 2004 generation, who will be 18 in 2022, will be the first to integrate the universal pension system, which will not concern all those less than 17 years of their retirement and will govern, for all other French people, only the years worked from 2025, ”says the text.
In committee, MEPs noted the future increase in the salaries of teachers and researchers by isolating this "guarantee" in a specific article of the text. And, to respond in particular to the discontent of lawyers, they also voted in favor of a reduction in the contributions of independent professions. These two provisions must be confirmed in the Chamber.
Regarding supplementary pension plans (Agirc-Arrco), they can draw on their financial reserves to help the transition to the new plan. A point which arouses the ire of the trade unions, in particular the CFE-CGC. As for the special plans (SNCF, RATP, EDF, Paris Opera, etc.), which are therefore destined to disappear, employers may take charge during the transition of the differences in salary contributions of the employees concerned.
From an annuity plan to a “point” plan
In the future system, the amount of the pension will depend on the number of points accumulated "throughout the professional career" and no longer on the contribution period (in quarters) and the reference salary (25 best years in the private sector, Last 6 months in the public). The system also remains a pay-as-you-go system (working people finance the pensions of the older generation).
The point will have an "acquisition value" (during the career) and a "service value" (for the calculation of the pension), which will not be able to fall, nor increase less quickly than inflation. This rule, which was already in the ordinary bill, was added by the deputies to the organic bill. This means that future Social Security funding laws will not be able to lower either the point value or the amount of pensions to balance the pension system.
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The value of the point will be calculated using a “new indicator” from INSEE on “changes in average income from employment per capita”. Problem: the left but also some deputies of the LREM majority criticize the great vagueness that reigns around the point calculation method, based on an indicator that does not exist to date.
What about the arduousness?
Another sensitive subject: taking into account the arduous nature of certain professions (construction workers, food industry workers, etc.) On this thorny question, which opposes employers 'and workers' organizations, a battle of amendments is to be expected. The leader of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, asked again this Sunday in an interview with the JDD, at Medef (employers) to accept collective recognition of the arduousness of certain trades, "at the level of the branches".
The pending age of balance…
The legal retirement age will remain at 62 (or less for certain professions), but it will be necessary to “work a little longer” to receive a full pension. An “age of equilibrium”, combined with a “bonus-penalty mechanism” of 5% per year, will thus aim to “encourage French people to leave later with a better pension”.
Initially, the government envisaged its entry into force in 2022, to gradually increase it to 64 years in 2027. Faced with the outcry from unions, this "short-term measure" was withdrawn from the bill and a Conference of funders bringing together the State, the social partners and the Court of Auditors was launched. If it succeeds by the end of April in proposing other means of “achieving financial balance”, these will be incorporated later into the bill by amendment, when the text is examined in the Senate.
For the time being, the CFDT, which had suggested this idea for a conference, is calling for "social progress" and a "shared diagnosis" on funding needs before agreeing to get to the heart of the matter: how to find 12 billion euros by 2027?
Early departures for certain professions
Civil servants exercising certain "royal functions" (police, customs, prison guards, air traffic controllers) can always retire at 57, even 52 years of age. Ditto for the military, who will keep the right to receive a pension after 17 or 27 years of "effective service".
For other civil servants in the “active categories” and employees of special schemes, the legal age will be gradually raised to 62, but the extension of the “arduousness account” and of retirement for permanent incapacity already in force in the private sector will allow some to stop working at 60.
A minimum pension of 85% of the minimum wage
Future retirees "having completed a full career" will receive if necessary "additional points" so that their pension reaches 1000 euros net in 2022, then 83% of the net minimum wage in 2023, 84% in 2024 and 85% in 2025. The CFDT is demanding a minimum pension at 100% of the minimum wage.
New family and marital rights
An important novelty: the reform provides for a pension subsidy of 5% from the first child. This bonus for each child, with an additional 2% bonus for the third child, was to be allocated to the mother by default, unless the parents decided to share it. Or even grant it to the father, which feminist organizations fear, insofar as men often earn a better living than women.
The government therefore revised its copy on February 14 and is now proposing "the compulsory allocation of half of family rights (2.5%) to the mother for maternity benefits, with no possibility of partition". Women who raise their children alone will get "extra points". Overall, will women be the winners? Difficult to know.
Regarding conjugal rights, the survivor's pension, accessible from the age of 55, and allowing the surviving spouse - a woman in nine out of ten cases - to "keep 70% of the couple's retirement rights", will be maintained, underlined the Secretary of State for Pensions, Laurent Pietraszewski. Divorced women may, for their part, receive "55% of the pension" of the deceased "who will be prorated for the duration of marriage, relative to the duration of contribution, and subject to means test", he also said. ad.
