The Minister of Labor and Employment, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, during a question session with the government at the National Assembly in Paris on January 21, 2025 (AFP / Bertrand GUAY)
Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet suggested Tuesday that certain retirees contribute to financing social protection, a proposal welcomed with interest by employers but which is not unanimous in the centrist bloc.
The contribution to the financing of social protection “can actually concern people who work”, she said on TF1 where she was questioned about the Senate's proposal to make all active people work 7 hours more per year without pay. to bail out Social Security.
“But it can also concern retired people who can afford it,” she added, specifying that “it should not concern all retirees (…), it could be 40% of retirees” .
At Matignon, it is emphasized that Ms. Panosyan-Bouvet's proposal is at this stage “a personal position”.
“There are different taxes and contributions that could be considered for retirees who can afford it (…) depending on the level of pension,” explained Ms. Panosyan-Bouvet. “It’s up for discussion, it could be 2,000 euros, it could be 2,500.”
For the Minister of Labor and Employment, “the financing of social protection today falls too much on businesses and workers.”
“There comes a certain point when this burden must be better distributed across the entire population, especially for a risk which is that of dependence, which mainly concerns the elderly, those who will return to a situation of dependency and loss of autonomy,” she stressed.
Asked about the proposal from the Minister of Labor, Medef President Patrick Martin replied: “Why not? Temporarily, in a targeted manner, by protecting small pensions and distributing the effort in an equitable manner.”
– “Anti-work ideas” –
The president of Medef, Patrick Martin, October 4, 2024 in Paris (AFP / Thomas SAMSON)
“If everyone must participate in the war effort, why not,” he added, recalling that retirement was “a pay-as-you-go system and therefore it is the employees and companies who pay for pensions” .
“At a minimum, the effort required of companies under the 2025 budgets is 12 to 13 billion euros. In comparison, the reduced CSG rate for retirees is 11.5 billion per year,” noted the one who asked at the beginning of January to remove the deduction for professional expenses for retirees and align their CSG rate with that of active people.
Concerning the option of 7 hours of additional work per year without remuneration, “we have to look with the social partners because it can be 10 minutes per week (…) there are different applications depending on the branches”, affirmed Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, dismissing the idea of eliminating “a periodic day”.
The government seeks to avoid the drift of Social Security accounts and the Minister of Labor, Health and Solidarity Catherine Vautrin had reactivated the track of 7 hours of additional work per year without remuneration in an interview with JDD this weekend . This was abandoned under the Barnier government.
This “form of contribution to the national financing effort for dependency and the autonomy branch” should generate “two billion euros”, she indicated. “If we actually add a contribution from retirees who can afford it, we would be looking at perhaps 500, 800 million euros more depending on the threshold that is decided.”
Vice-president of the group of Macronist deputies in the National Assembly, deputy Mathieu Lefèvre castigated “two anti-work ideas” on X.
“Work seven hours more without additional pay, tax retirees who have worked all their lives, no and three times no! Work must pay,” he reacted.
Questioned on Europe 1, the Minister of Equality between Women and Men and the Fight against Discrimination Aurore Bergé considered that her Labor counterpart was “right” to initiate “reflection” on “a shared effort in society at a very constrained moment in terms of public finances.
