Some 700,000 private sector retirees are affected, from Monday 1er April, from the end of “penalty” temporary 10% applied to supplementary pensions, under the agreement signed in October by the managers of the Agirc-Arrco scheme. This penalty had already ceased to apply on 1er December 2023 for all new retirees.
Monday 1er April being a public holiday, pensioners “will see it in their bank account on Tuesday April 2”, specified Didier Weckner, vice-president of Agirc-Arrco. They were informed by email and on their personal space of the “new amount of their pension”. “There is no retroactive effect” for the previous months, he recalled.
According to the scheme, the average Agirc-Arrco pension gain is 60 euros per month and there is no action to take. On the other hand, “retirees who receive an increase [bonus temporaire] will continue to collect it in accordance with the initial schedule”, specifies Agirc-Arrco.
42% of incoming retirees have experienced the penalty since 2019
Introduced in 2019, the measure aimed to encourage employees to work one more year even though they met the legal conditions to leave at full rate. Failing this, they saw their pension cut by 10% for three years, with a small portion of them benefiting from a rate “reduced” of 5%. A “bonuses” applied, however, to those working two to four additional years. It will be kept for those who are not affected by the pension reform.
The end of the penalty was decided in October by the trade union and employer organizations, co-managers of the scheme, in a new steering agreement which runs until 2026. This agreement takes into account the cleaned up financial situation of the scheme and the new rules provided for by the pension reform, which came into force on 1er september. In particular, it made it possible to revalue pensions by 4.9% to compensate for inflation.
About 42% of incoming retirees experienced the “penalty” since 2019 and 1.3% have benefited from a premium, according to figures communicated in the fall by Agirc-Arrco. The end of “penalty” will ultimately cost the regime 500 million euros annually. The Agirc-Arrco additional portion represents between 30% (for the lowest incomes) and 60% (for executives) of the total pension of former private sector employees, according to the president of Agirc-Arrco, Brigitte Pisa.