Many French people realize that part of their professional career does not in reality give them any additional retirement rights. Result: work longer or accept a reduced pension.
The subject comes up repeatedly in end-of-career files. Policyholders, often close to retirement, notice a gap between their professional career and the quarters actually taken into account. And for some, the consequence is immediate: having to extend their career or accept a lower pension than they could have hoped for.
The subject even went up to the courts. The Council of State agreed with the government on the rules for long careers. This system allows you to leave before the age of 64 if you started working early and completed enough quarters. But, not everyone counts in the same way. The highest administrative court considers that the State has the right to determine which periods are studied. Clearly, certain jobs may not be retained, even if they were performed well.
And this concerns many people, often from atypical professional backgrounds or marked by public integration schemes. According to several estimates, at least 1.5 million French people would be affected by this situation. Many started working young, sometimes as early as adolescence, and logically thought they could benefit from an early departure. But by examining their career record, they discover a lack of so-called “contributory” quarters, those which really count to open up this right.
The periods concerned date back to the 1980s, between 1984 and 1990. At that time, young people aged 16 to 21, and up to 25 years old for some registered with the ANPE (France Travail), worked within the framework of collective utility work, the TUC. These contracts offered temporary missions in communities, associations or sometimes private structures. But these young people were then considered as vocational training trainees, which limited, or even eliminated, the associated pension contributions. Result today: these periods can be validated as “assimilated” quarters since the 2023 reform, but they are still not recognized as “contributory” quarters, essential for access to the long career system.
In this context, the TUC association, the Forgotten of Retirement, has structured itself around this observation and is campaigning for a review of the rules. It brings together several thousand people, notably via a very active online group, and regularly calls on the public authorities to reopen the case. Its objective is clear: to obtain recognition of these periods as real quarters of contributions, in order to allow former beneficiaries to leave earlier without penalty.
