The pension freeze finally thawed before its time? This is what Laurent Wauquiez, in an interview on TF1, this Monday evening, said he obtained from Prime Minister Michel Barnier: “There will be an increase in pensions from January 1, 2025 for all retirees, (up to) half of inflation,” declared, initially, the leader of the Republican Right group in the National Assembly.
Another gesture will concern pensions “below the minimum wage” according to him: “On July 1, there will be a second increase, this time, for the most modest retirees, with the objective of fully protecting them from the inflation so that there is no loss of purchasing power (…) We tried to take a threshold that was objective, we chose the minimum wage.”
“Scapegoats for waste”
The deputy for Haute-Loire gave two examples illustrating the benefits of the latest increase: a retirement pension of €1,000 per month would increase by 200 euros over the year. A pension of €1,400 would benefit from an additional €300 per year.
“It's been a month since we worked (…) It was unacceptable that retirees were the scapegoats for the waste that there was,” he added, saying that one “retiree in two will be protected by this anti-inflation shield. As a reminder, the government planned to postpone the indexation of pensions to inflation from January 1 to July 1.
Laurent Wauquiez estimates the cost of the measure between 500 million and one billion euros. A sum that he intends to finance by making savings in “administrative bureaucracy”.
