Will the conclave on pensions end on a total failure? The discussions between social partners to improve the last reform of 2023 – repelled in particular the legal age of departure from 62 to 64 years – had resulted in a dead end at the beginning of the summer. But they still gave birth to a few advances, with a new method of calculating women’s retirement and the lowering of the age of cancellation of the discount. Measures whose fate is today uncertain: there is no guarantee that they will appear in the social security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2026, which must be deposited in the National Assembly at the beginning of October.
Confirming the – too rare – Progress of the pensions conclave is however a minimum for the unions surveyed on Monday September 15 by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. The new tenant of Matignon, if he was careful not to give guarantees to the social partners on the measures ultimately retained in the security budget, assured them of his listening: “He made us understand his need to meet as many people as possible and entrusted us with his desire to build a budget with a common trunk”appreciates Pascale Coton, the negotiator in charge of pensions for the CFTC.
What “solution” for women’s retirement?
What would be the elements of this “common trunk”? The expert in the Confederation of Christian workers, as well as his colleagues from the CGT, the CFDT and the CFE-CGC, will know it more precisely in the coming weeks, after the Matignon arbitrations but before the presentation of the security budget in Parliament in October. Priorities emerge all the same, advance Pascale Coton: “Sébastien Lecornu seemed to me convinced that it is possible to find solutions for the retirement of women.” Will the option chosen will be that of the conclave, namely to take into account the 24 or 23 best years (depending on the number of children) for the average salary serving as a basis for calculating the retirement of mothers, instead of 25 years currently? Or will he opt for an upper, as the CFE-CGC hopes? Too early to say.
Nothing acted either on the CFTC’s proposal to advance the age of the full automatic rate for retirement, that is to say without discount, from 67 to 66.5 years -the threshold selected as part of the Conclave -, or even 66 years. “The Prime Minister took note of our request”simply sums up Pascale Coton. Same story on the side of the CFE-CGC and its National Social Protection Secretary, Christelle Thieffinne. “We felt the Prime Minister listening to us on the issue of arduousness. We reminded him of the goal that the people concerned can go earlier»»she explains. A workhorse for the framework of executives, and the CFDT, which encountered during the conclave at the systematic refusal of employers, which prefers to insist on the prevention of arduousness rather than on “reparation”, deplores the elected CFE-CGC.
Back back to the white year and the gel of pensions?
Will the painful professions obtain this repair? Will the request for progressive retirement become an enforceable so that the employer can no longer refuse her, as hoping for Christelle Thieffinne? Nothing has yet been decided on these subjects, as well as on the thorny subject of the revaluation of pensions. “Sébastien Lecornu is not sure that the white year (and therefore the freezing of pensions in 2026, editor’s note) is a good idea”Pascale cotton slides. And to specify that it might be a question of touching the “Bigger pensions but not to the smallest”. Prime Minister’s latest consultations with political forces, which will last until Thursday, September 18, could make it possible to lift these numerous uncertainties. But not to return to the reform of pension of 2023: “It’s too late”estimates Pascale Coton.
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