Candidates in the French presidential race are divided on whether to keep, reduce or raise the current legal retirement age – a topic that has been a major source of political debate in France for decades. EURACTIV France reports.
Funded by social security contributions paid throughout an individual’s career, the system is mainly provided by the public sector, unlike in other European countries.
However, France – like most countries in the bloc – is facing the problem of an ageing population, with people retiring at a faster rate than entering the workforce.
Currently, the legal minimum retirement age is set at 62, with some exceptions, such as people with disabilities or work-related incapacity.
Candidates’ proposals to tackle the challenge of the increasingly costly pensions schemes vary between raising the retirement age, lowering it, and keeping it the same.
Status quo
Among the candidates who want to keep the current retirement age, Green candidate Yannick Jadot and Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo said they would enable more people in strenuous jobs to retire earlier.
Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen also said she would want to keep the retirement age at 62, but promised she would allow those who started work before the age of 20, who have contributed to the pension system for 40 years, to retire at 60.
Far-right candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and independent candidate Jean Lassalle both said they would not change the current system.
Raising the legal age
Three candidates in the race voiced their support for raising the retirement age.
Right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse of Les Républicains and outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist but economically liberal candidate, propose to raise the legal age to 65 years of age – but gradually. Both advocated for recognition of hardship and career length to be kept as criteria to avoid excessively penalising certain workers.
Far-right candidate Éric Zemmour said he wanted to raise the retirement age to 64 by 2030.
According to them, such a move would ensure the system remains financially sustainable. It would also cut costs to ensure the financing of other measures in their programmes.
Dropping the legal retirement age
The radical-left and far-left candidates were united on reducing the legal retirement age to 60 years of age, but varied on how long contributions to the pension scheme should be.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise supported the threshold for time spent paying pension contributions to be set at 40 years. According to Trotskyite Philippe Poutou, contributions should stop once they’ve reached 37 years, and people working strenuous jobs should be allowed to stop working at 55 years of age.
Communist candidate Fabien Roussel promised a full pension for those who had a complete career from 18 to 60, and that the state will cover the contributions for possible periods of inactivity.
Pension increases
The candidates were unified, however, on the principle that pension payments should be increased.
On the left, Mélenchon suggested a minimum monthly pension of €1,400, while Roussel proposed €1,200. Revolutionary candidate Nathalie Arthaud went further, proposing an increase up to €2,000.
More conservative was Le Pen, who proposed €1,000, the same as Hidalgo. Jadot’s proposal was similar, amounting to €1,063.
Macron proposed setting the minimum at €1,100, adding that he wants to simplify the process of combining a pension with a job. Meanwhile, Zemmour and Pécresse pledged to increase the widow’s or widower’s survivor’s pension from 54% to 75%.
French elections: all polls and forecasts at a glance
As the first round of the French presidential election is fast approaching, EURACTIV France and Europe Elects have compiled all the polls and projections you need.
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
