This is the debate that arises with each new pension reform: pay-as-you-go or capitalization?
While the executive's project does not call into question the historic pay-as-you-go system, several voices are raised here and there in favor of capitalization: David Lisnard, Philippe Juvin, Jacques Garello...
In a column published this Saturday in
Le Journal du Dimanche
, a group of economists and entrepreneurs (including François Asselin, president of the CPME) pleads in turn for a principle of collective capitalization, taking as an example the pension fund complementary to pharmacists, the CAVP.
Returning to past reforms, the signatories do not mince their words: “
Contributions have increased, the retirement age has moved back, the methods for calculating and reassessing pensions have been tightened.
This reduces the purchasing power of both active and retired people.
Their fear: a drastic drop in the purchasing power of seniors in the coming decades.
“
According to the Pensions Orientation Council, in 2070 it will return to the level of the 1980s, with a drop in the relative purchasing power of retirees of around 20% compared to the rest of the population”, they argue
. .
Read alsoNew loss of purchasing power in sight for retirees
For the editors of the forum, “
this decline is the mechanical consequence of a shaky demography and an almost exclusive financing of day-to-day pensions by distribution in the private sector.
Is the pay-as-you-go system established in post-war France outdated?
This is what the signatories assert, who believe that “
limiting the financing of compulsory pensions to pay-as-you-go leads to the impoverishment of the mass of future retirees from the private sector.
»
For the collective, the solution already exists, it is capitalization, in addition to the distribution: “
some professions have had the foresight to reinstate compulsory capitalization and find that it is a success”
.
Two schemes are mentioned: that of civil servants, automatically affiliated since 2005 to the additional public service pension (RAFP) and that, less known, of pharmacists.
Via the Pharmacists' Old Age Insurance Fund, part of the profession's supplementary pension is in fact based on collective capitalization.
Read alsoRetirement: winning civil servants with private rules
The authors call for “
generalizing these collective capitalization systems in addition to distribution
”.
By what means?
That of the social partners, who co-manage French supplementary pensions since 1947. “
The Agirc-Arrco has real legitimacy.
It could create an equivalent of the RAFP, which would work for the benefit of all private sector employees
, ”suggests the forum.
Beneficial for the purchasing power of retirees, the measure would also be a support for growth, according to the signatories, who see it as a vector for “
financing businesses and projects of the future
”.
