“A working life must offer a decent pension and therefore any retirement for a full career will have to be more than 1,000 euros per month. ” The promise of a minimum pension of a thousand euros for “full careers” made a comeback in Emmanuel Macron’s speech during his televised address on July 12. Nothing new under the gray sky: the Head of State had already formulated it at the end of April 2019 and it had reappeared as part of the bill on the universal pension system.
No details have yet been provided on the terms and schedule. These questions will be on the agenda of the consultation with the social partners announced for the start of the school year, specifies the team of the Secretary of State in charge of pensions, Laurent Pietraszewski.
What is the minimum pension today for retirees who have this famous full career behind them? There is no system common to all retirees. But minimum pension systems exist for full careers in many schemes, each with its rules, conditions, modalities and amounts …
One in three retirees from the general scheme
The main one is the minimum contribution, the “mico”. It concerns retirees of the general scheme (former employees of the private sector, craftsmen or traders) and former agricultural employees.
Although it is little known to the general public, because it is automatically applied to the basic pension without requiring any action, it is a key device: at the end of 2020, nearly 5 million retirees from the general system were benefiting from it, i.e. a third of retirees from this plan, according to pension insurance. More 40% of women who retired last year in this scheme have benefited.
The principle: your basic pension is raised to the level of the minimum contributory if you obtain your retirement at full rate (without discount), whether it is because you have the number of quarters required for your generation, because you are old enough of the automatic full rate, or because you obtain the full rate thanks to a derogatory device. You must have requested all your pensions, basic as well as additional.
This “mico” is very complex. If it currently amounts to 645.50 euros per month (if it is served whole), an increase of maximum 59.86 euros exists for those who have contributed at least 120 quarters to the general scheme or to the scheme for agricultural employees. , therefore bringing the “mico plus” to 705.35 euros per month. And prorations of these maximum amounts apply according to your insurance period and your number of quarters contributed to the general scheme and / or agricultural employees. The method of calculation also differs depending on whether or not you were only affiliated to the general scheme and agricultural employees.
Since 2012, the minimum contributory cannot cause your overall pensions (basic + supplementary) to exceed a ceiling, currently 1,203 euros per month.
For civil servants and farmers
This contributory minimum only concerns the basic pension: there is no minimum pension at Agirc-Arrco, the supplementary pension for employees, which is added to their basic pension. There is therefore no minimum amount of global pension for former employees, traders and craftsmen.
The “mico”, however, has equivalents in other basic pension schemes.
Among civil servants, the minimum is thus called “guaranteed minimum”, sometimes nicknamed “miga”.
Your civil service pension is raised to the guaranteed minimum level, in particular in the following cases: you have the number of quarters required for a pension without reduction; you have reached the age limit for your grade / job or the minimum guaranteed age (it varies according to the generations and the category, it is 67 years for sedentary civil servants born from 1958, 66 years and nine months for those born in 1957, etc.); you are receiving a disability pension (the other cases are detailed here).
The “miga” amounts to € 1,187.26 per month. This maximum amount concerns civil servants with at least 40 years of service, it is lower for others, but the calculation here is not strictly proportional.
Among self-employed farmers, the matter is further complicated since two minimum pension schemes coexist. First, an equivalent of “mico” and “miga”, often called “pension increased de reference” (PMR) or “increase of small pensions”.
Hazardous comparisons …
Like its cousins, the PMR only concerns basic pensions at full rate, and the principle is to bring the basic pension to the level of this minimum, i.e. 699.07 euros in 2021 for farmers, and 555.50 euros for collaborating spouses and family helpers. A pro-rated amount for incomplete careers, which cannot cause your total pensions to exceed 874.76 euros.
The other device, but which only concerns farmers, provided that they have the full rate and that they have contributed at least 17.5 years as an exclusive or main farm manager: retirement points Complementary free of charge are granted (the “differential supplement”) if the overall pension paid by the Mutualité sociale agricole (basic + complementary) does not reach 75% of the minimum wage. This will be 85%, i.e. 1,035 euros net monthly, from 1er November, in application of a law of mid-2020.
The modalities of minimum pensions for self-employed farmers are expected to evolve further in the near future, with another bill on the subject being examined in Parliament.
Conversely, there is no minimum pension scheme for freelancers affiliated to the National Old Age Insurance Fund for Liberal Professions (CNAVPL). It is also difficult to compare the minimum pension schemes of the different schemes, even for so-called equivalent schemes (mico, miga, PMR).
On the one hand because if the principle seems broadly the same, in detail their terms (amounts, conditions, application of ceilings, etc.) diverge. On the other hand, because they apply in schemes that do not respond to the same logic – how to compare a device applying only to the basic pension of employees to another applying to almost the entire pension civil servants (the latter having, strictly speaking, no supplementary pension)?
As is often the case with pensions, the multiplicity of schemes seriously complicates comparisons.
The minimum old age at 906 euros
These minimum pension schemes should not be confused with the solidarity allowance for the elderly, the former minimum old age. The latter is a social minimum, aimed at guaranteeing a minimum of resources for the elderly.
Among the conditions for receiving it: be at least 65 years old (with some exceptions), reside in France and have an income below the fixed ceilings. Its amount is “differential”: it corresponds to the difference between the maximum allowance (906.81 euros in 2021 for a single person, 1,407.82 euros for a couple) and your income (be careful, not all income is taken into account and professional income is subject to an allowance). You must apply to your pension fund or, failing that, to the town hall.
In 2019, the 601,000 beneficiaries of the minimum old age represented nearly 4% of those over 62, according to the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics.