Goodbye pension reform and its points system, CFDT totem.
Emmanuel Macron buried, this Thursday in the Lot, the very controversial mother of his reforms.
At least, in its version brought until December 2019 by Minister Jean-Paul Delevoye, who resigned after our revelations about his cascading oversights.
A law yet passed at first reading by the deputies, but provisionally placed in March 2020 in the drawers of the Republic because of Covid-19.
During a stroll on the ground of Martel, the Head of State gave the coup de grace.
"It (
Editor's note: the reform
) was very ambitious, extremely complex and a source of concern, it must be admitted, to be lucid about the way the country experienced it", he explained shortly after to the press .
And to launch elliptical: "Nothing is excluded", but "it will not be the same reform", avoiding any other question in particular the calendar: in 2021 or in 2022?
An art of dodging so as not to offend anyone in the middle of the regional countryside, those who claim it as well as those who refuse it.
A deficit estimated at 30 billion euros
According to our information, the idea of a large social conference, at the end of June during July, is currently infusing at the Élysée, which could be the place where Emmanuel Macron will cut his cards. The president also took the pulse of the social partners on the format of a possible meeting, during the social summit in Porto.
(Portugal).
If the crisis eclipsed for a time the virulent debates, the subject of pensions, red rag of the unions, remains as hot as ever.
Especially since it is now a question within the executive, as the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire has been hammering for weeks, to save money.
Obviously to reduce a pension deficit estimated at 30 billion euros in 2020 by the Pension Orientation Council (COR), figures which will be updated shortly.
But also to finance the 3 billion missing from another reform which should be presented in the summer, that of dependency.
Read also Pension reform: the majority divided, Emmanuel Macron wants to decide by mid-July
A “Retirement 2” version stripped of its contours of a social project, therefore of point-based systemic reform - which will alienate the support of the CFDT-, would be one of the avenues on which the executive is working.
Before his departure from Matignon, Édouard Philippe (supported by Bercy) had already dug the furrow at the beginning of 2020 for a parametric reform, with immediate savings measures - also called for by the right - supposed to settle the financial file " short term ".
An approach that Jean Castex had been invited to pursue by Emmanuel Macron, barely appointed Prime Minister.
Scenarios under study for a year
The government is not starting from scratch. This is precisely the subject of a secret note that Le Parisien revealed on July 11, 2020 and which was written ... in March 2020! Its title? “Future of the pension reform project”. One of the five scenarios proposes to set Emmanuel Macron's mantra to music: we will have to work longer. The authors recommend “technically possible” age measures to gradually raise the legal retirement age to 64, against 62 at present: three months per generation from the 1962 generation.
But also "the introduction of a minimum age of the full rate (without discount) which can be combined with a drop in the age of the full rate", the first would go to 63 or 64 years (against 62 years currently) and the second would be reduced from 67 to 65. With the key to significant savings by 2027: 5.8 billion for the decline to 64 years, up to 16 billion for the combined measures of the full rate, according to figures from the COR and the Directorate of Social Security.
In terms of contribution duration, speeding up the application of the Touraine calendar is also one of the avenues. Or one more quarter per generation, instead of an additional quarter every three years as currently, in order to reach 43 years (i.e. 3.9 billion euros in savings) or 44 years (5 billion euros) more quickly. ). Other less flammable scenarios are also being considered, such as the revaluation of small pensions, an option of a report submitted by two LREM deputies. "Everything is on the table," insists a government source.