Deputies and senators agreed, Wednesday, November 27 in the evening, on the latest version of the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS). This decisive text, resulting from a joint joint committee (CMP) bringing together seven elected officials from both chambers, will be debated on Monday in the National Assembly.
But this crucial step could be swept away quickly for Michel Barnier, almost condemned to use his first 49.3 to get the project adopted. This prospect would force the government to face a motion of censure in response within the week. Here, in the meantime, is how this final version differs from the Social Security budget project previously discussed.
Pensions significantly increased, but not indexed to inflation
In the initial version of the Social Security finance bill, the government planned to postpone by six months, to July 1, 2025, the revaluation of 1.8% of basic pensions, a figure modeled on inflation estimated in 2024 After having proposed, through the Minister of Budget and Public Accounts, Laurent Saint-Martin, that all pensions be revalued on January 1st. “up to 0.9%” (i.e. half of inflation) before a catch-up on July 1 for only pensions below the minimum wage, the CMP validated a compromise which significantly lowers this rate.
The amendment adopted indicates a revaluation of 0.8% on January 1, before a supplement allowing an overall revaluation of 1.6% in July for retirees whose total pensions (basic and supplementary) do not exceed 1,500 euros gross.
Another setback by the government compared to its initial copy: the spread over three to four years of the increase in contributions to the National Retirement Fund for local authority agents, a request from the Senate.
The contribution of businesses significantly reduced
Deputies and senators found a compromise on the very sensitive issue of reducing employer exemptions, which currently cost the State nearly 80 billion euros. While the government initially proposed to make companies contribute four billion euros, the new text ultimately asks them for an effort of 1.6 billion, via a reduction in the reductions in charges from which they benefit.
The project also subjects apprentices to two social contributions (CSG and CRDS), and plans to increase the taxation of “free shares” distributed by employers to their employees or managers, for an expected return of around 500 million euros. .
The seven hours of unpaid work abandoned
Hotly debated in the Senate, a measure aimed at making workers work without pay for seven more hours per year to finance the disability and old age sector was deleted from the final text.
New taxes on sodas, not on tobacco
Both the National Assembly and the Senate had debated at length measures of “behavioral taxation”particularly around a strengthening of the “soda tax”. This is maintained in the version voted by the senators: it will cost 4 cents per liter for the least sweet drinks, and up to 35 cents per liter for the sweetest. The parallel increase in a tax on “sweetened drinks”voted against the advice of the government, was nevertheless postponed to 2026.
An increase in taxes on lotteries, casinos and other sports betting also appears in the text.
The parliamentarians of the joint committee, however, reversed course on two measures voted in the Senate: the acceleration of the increase in the price of a packet of cigarettes as well as a tax on “pouches”, these sachets of nicotine in gum or in balls to place in the mouth.
