Retirement: Are there “hidden” deficits?

The Court of Auditors must submit its report on the Prime Minister’s retirement system deficit this Thursday morning. The whole question is whether this deficit is 11 billion euros or … 5 times more, for this year!

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The “hidden” deficits of the pension system regularly make headlines in the press. It is all the more juicy that these deficits concern civil servants and certain special regimes such as RATP, for which the State pays a balance subsidy each year, which is in several tens of billions of euros. Lastly, it makes people talk.

But when the Prime Minister himself, François Bayrou, seizes the question in his general policy speech, we pay more attention to it. Before the National Assembly on January 14, François Bayrou estimated this “hole” at 55 billion euros for 2025, when the pension orientation council (COR), also attached to Matignon and which makes each year Accounts, the evaluation to just over 11 billion euros (-0.4% of gross domestic product) …

So “hidden deficit”? That Nenni. All this is perfectly public. Each year, in the annex of the state budget, the deputies vote the “Pensions” special assignment account (known as “Pensions”) and thereby authorize the State has proceeded to the necessary payment to balance the diets of the State Public Service and certain special regimes (SNCF, RATP, Mines, etc.). These balance subsidies reach more than 52 billion for state officials and more than 7 billion for special regimes. These are laws of 2001 and 2006 that have established this: the accounts of these regimes are in the “Pensions” and not … elsewhere.

A costing that changes the situation

What is true, on the other hand: these amounts are not counted by the COR, which each year calculates the balance or the deficit of the pension system (expenditure less revenue). The body uses an agreement that “Does not inform about the situation of the State Public Service, nor on those of subsidized regimes, since it systematically supposes them to balance”according to the pension monitoring committee (organization set up by the public authorities and which gives recommendations to achieve the objectives of the pension system, once the CR has produced its quantified report). The COR is indeed the consolidated financial situation of all the other regimes, but not of these. It is neither hidden nor secret, but it’s like that!

The whole question is now whether the Court of Auditors, responsible by the Prime Minister to make a reliable photograph of the deficit of our pension system, will integrate these balance subsidies in the deficit or not. Which, as we understood, radically changes the situation, since bringing the deficit for 2025 from just over 11 billion euros to more than 55 billion. The efforts to be provided to put the on -foot system are not entirely the same!

This is an important subject, since before trying to amend the reform of 2023 (which had brought the legal retirement age to 64 years), the social partners must agree on a common deficit figure. The Court of Auditors presents its report to the Prime Minister tomorrow morning (Thursday, February 20, 2025), before the consultations began. François Bayrou agreed to hand over the fate of the reform of 2023 and the gap of the legal age to 64 years in the hands of the social partners, provided that they find spare solutions which do not aggravate the balance of the diet. We wish them much pleasure.