Basic pension: revaluation postponed from January 1 to July 1, 2025

Retirees will have to be patient. Bercy plans to postpone the increase in their basic pension by six months in 2025.

Capital Video: Basic pension: revaluation postponed from January 1 to July 1, 2025

This is bad news for retirees. Contrary to the traditional calendar, the basic pension will not be increased on January 1st but on July 1st… i.e. six months later. While a revaluation of pensions below inflation had been mentioned, the government opted for a more discreet technique to save money, but which will not be painless for retirees’ wallets. According to the figures put forward by Bercy, the increase will follow inflation and should be around 1.8% but will therefore only be applied from July 1, 2025.

The technique is far from new and has already been used by several governments. A little flashback. Before 2009, the basic pension was already increased in January. From 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of the Republic, decided to postpone this revaluation to April 1 of each year. This stratagem is used by his successor François Hollande who, in 2014, postponed this increase to October 1st. A date retained for the annual increase in pensions until 2017. Emmanuel Macron himself has already used this possibility by postponing the revaluation of the basic pension from October 1, 2018 to January 1, 2019. Result: retirees do not benefited from no increase in their basic pension in 2018.

Several billion possible savings

Here again, to save money, is the calendar technique. By postponing the increase in the basic pension by six months, the government intends to involve retirees in the general effort required to restore the country’s finances. On the Bercy side, for the moment, no figures have been mentioned. But we can resume the calculation based on the sums announced when the date of the revaluation was postponed to 2018. We were then talking about 380 million euros in savings for a 3-month postponement and the planned revaluation was 0.3%. In 2025, according to data put forward by the office of the Minister of the Economy, the revaluation should be around 1.8%. The gain for the state budget should therefore be in the billions.

Please note, the delay in the pension revaluation only concerns the basic pension. For the supplementary pension, for the moment, no change to the timetable has been announced. For example, if you are a former private sector employee, the revaluation of your Agirc-Arrco supplement is planned for November 1st. The social partners, managers of the scheme, are also in the process of discussing the level of this increase, which should be known on October 15.