Accused of showing bad will on the subject of agricultural pensions, the government has taken a decision which should put an end to the controversy. From 1er January 2026, the pension paid to former farm managers will indeed be set according to the “twenty-five best years” of their careers, in accordance with the planned schedule. As doubt began to arise over the date of entry into force of this rule, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, promised that the deadlines will be respected. This commitment was made official at the end of April, two weeks before the examination of the draft orientation law for food and agricultural sovereignty and the renewal of generations in agriculture which begins on Tuesday, May 14, in a public session at the National Assembly. .
The arbitration rendered by Mr. Attal follows a heated dispute which, for several months, pitted the executive against representatives of the peasantry and parliamentarians from the Les Républicains (LR) party. The tensions were so strong that officials from the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA) slammed the door on March 15, during a meeting in Matignon. The organization then suspected those in power of seeking to postpone a reform on the calculation of farmers’ pensions.
At the origin of the controversy, there are provisions appearing in a bill promulgated in February 2023. Defended by Julien Dive, LR deputy for Aisne, the text aims to determine, from 1er January 2026, the basic retirement of “non-agricultural employees” – operators, mainly – “based on the most advantageous twenty-five years of insurance”and no longer over the entire career.
Same mechanism as for the private sector
The approach has several objectives. First of all, it intends to combat an injustice by applying the same mechanism to the profession as for private sector employees. It is also a matter of eliminating from the calculation “lean” years, due to a poor harvest or a decline in the prices of products sold – very frequent hazards in this sector of activity. The proponents of the reform thus want to improve the amount of pensions allocated to farmers, which is significantly lower than the average.
Adopted unanimously by the National Assembly and the Senate, the “Dive law” had planned for the government to deliver, by the summer of 2023, a report on the conditions for its entry into force, with several scenarios provided turnkey. But this expertise, carried out by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs and by the General Council for Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas, was finally communicated only in January 2024. Delays which began to fuel tensions.
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