The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, at the Elysée Palace on January 18, 2023 (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, defends Sunday in the JDD a reform of “redistributive” pensions and intended to “restore a maximum of equality”, on the eve of his presentation to the Council of Ministers, confirming in passing that the increase in small pensions will also concern current pensioners.
The bill “will include the revaluation of small pensions for current retirees who have worked all their lives at the minimum wage, not just future ones”, who will receive “an increase in their pension of up to 100 euros per month “. This will concern around 200,000 new retirees per year and “1.8 million current retirees”, he specifies, against the two million mentioned so far.
“This reform is redistributive”, insists Mr. Dussopt, citing the impact study of the bill, which “shows an increase of nearly 5% for the 20% lowest pensions, against less than 1% for the 20% highest pensions”. As for women’s pensions, still according to the impact study, “in the long term” its increase “will be twice as large as that which men will experience (+ 2.2% against + 0.9%)”, underlines he.
Despite raising the legal age from 62 to 64, the effective starting age is 62.9 today and “in reality will only shift by about six months on average, and only three months for those who have the lowest pensions” thanks to the device in favor of long careers, argues the minister, for whom in this reform “there are no losers”.
Asked whether it is not unfair that workers who began to contribute at age 20 must always contribute at 44 and not 43, the Minister replies that some “are leaving today after 44 years of contributions when the law requires only 42”. “We are closing this gap,” he insists.
With this reform, “we have achieved our objective: to restore maximum equality”, summarizes Olivier Dussopt, also stressing that with the maintenance of the retirement age at full rate at 67, “the gap between the duration minimum and the maximum duration of work to leave at full rate will never have been so low” and that the maximum discount will pass “from 25% to 15%”.
© 2023 AFP
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