The thirteen million retirees in the private sector are at risk of losing purchasing power. Thursday, July 22, the social partners, who pilot the Agirc-Arrco supplementary scheme, paved the way for a revaluation of pensions below inflation during the next two years. This orientation was approved by three employers’ movements – the Medef, the Confederation of small and medium-sized enterprises (CPME), the Union of local businesses – and by two unions – the CFDT and the CFTC. Three employee groups – CFE-CGC, CGT, FO – have indicated that they are opposed to it. The purpose of this turn of the screw is to respect the “Financial trajectory” of the device, whose accounts were battered by the 2020 recession.
The solution adopted consists in rewriting, by means of a “Rider”, one of the national inter-professional agreements (ANI) which govern the functioning of Agirc-Arrco. With these amendments, the board will be able to decide that pensions grow at a lower rate than the price index, the spread – or the “Under-indexing” – up to 0.5 point (although this cannot exceed 0.2 point at present). The plan administrators will vote on the percentage at the start of the autumn, which will be applicable from the 1er November. They will have this faculty two years in a row.
“Find a trajectory”
To understand the mechanism put in place, it suffices to take an example, based on the most recent data from INSEE. In June, inflation reached 1.5% over the last twelve months. If it is this value which serves as a reference, the administrators of Agirc-Arrco will be authorized to increase pensions by only 1% for one year. And they will be able to do the same in the fall of 2022, for the following annual revaluation (1er November 2022 – October 31, 2023).
The common ground reached between employers and two unions is the result of negotiations opened on June 21. The social partners have embarked on this exercise, because the accounts of the regime suffered last year, with a “Overall result” of – € 4.1 billion. A situation which led the board of directors to exercise its “Duty of alert” : this procedure is initiated when the fund’s financial reserves (estimated at 62.6 billion euros at the end of 2020) are likely to fall below a threshold, corresponding to six months of pensions over a horizon of fifteen years. If this “Safety ratio” risk of being respected, it is then necessary to correct the shooting by adjusting “Resources or charges” of the system.
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