The military has a preferential regime allowing them to retire at 56 with a full career. In theory, the harmonization of public service pensions with the private sector, as envisaged by Arizona, would have the effect of raising the retirement age of the military to 66 years today and to 67 years from now on. 2030 (we would go from a career of 37 and a half years to a career of 45 years to obtain the full pension).
The dangerousness of the job
In addition, the calculation of the amount of the pension would no longer be carried out on the basis of the last ten years of career, but over the entire career, which is less interesting. “On the other hand, the dangerousness of the job, the fact of being far from home, all of that remains. There is no recognition of the specificity of the military profession.”peste Boris Morenville.
The N-VA told us: ‘You will not work until you are 67.’ But if it’s to leave at 62 and lose more than 300 euros of pension, that’s not okay.
However, we can expect that the future government will provide arrangements for the end of the military’s career and the maintenance of earlier retirement (it is difficult to ask the same thing of a 60-year-old soldier as to his 25-year-old colleague). “The N-VA told us: ‘You will not work until you are 67.’ But if it’s to leave at 62 and lose more than 300 euros of pension, that’s not okay.” We will have to wait until the government is put in place to find out more.
There remains one last element specific to Defense. Basic soldiers (volunteers and sailors), those who carry out the most demanding missions, are today all engaged under BDL status, that is to say under limited-term contracts (from 8 to 12 years). A priori, only some of them will become career soldiers and therefore possibly affected by the reform of military pensions. “Defense cannot do without BDLs, it needs so many personnelcadre Boris Morenville. The objective in 2025 was to have 25,000 soldiers. We are below. We can’t be choosy, we can’t deprive ourselves of staff.” In other words, it will not only be officers who will be affected by pension reform.
The self-sacrifice of the military
For the representative of the SLFP-Defense, we can certainly “assess” the pension scheme for “generations to come”but it should be maintained for active military personnel. The trade unionist believes that the military is already contributing to the effort to clean up public finances. “They already do this self-sacrifice. On average, a soldier is away from home for eight years over the course of a full career.” However, believes Mr. Morenville, the compensation in terms of remuneration and recovery time is meager. And the salary increases obtained under the previous legislature are only perceived as “an alignment with other sovereign functions (police officers, firefighters, etc.)”. In this regard, he notes, the expected refinancing of Defense will not be of much use without staff to run the shop.
“With Arizona, we will have the right to a medieval government. Before, a slave was told to work to earn his freedom. Here, it’s the same thing. We keep people working so that one day they can be free. It’s an enslavement of the population.”
