“Taxing retirees who have 2,000 euros of pension” is “totally scandalous”, said the vice-president of the RN Sébastien Chenu. “If there is that in the budget […] I am in favor of not allowing this to pass,” he warned on TF1, suggesting that this would be grounds for government censorship.
Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet proposed on Tuesday that certain retirees contribute to the financing of social protection. This contribution could relate “to retired people who can afford it”, said the minister, specifying that “it could be 40%” of retirees “depending on the pension level”. At Matignon, we emphasize that the minister's proposal is “a personal position”.
For Sébastien Chenu, this subject is “becoming a red line”, considering that taxation would be equivalent to a “spoliation” of the “fruit of the work” of retirees. Michel Barnier's desire to question the general indexation of pensions to inflation on January 1 had been put forward for the RN to justify the censorship which brought down the government.
“Scandalous”
Same position at the other end of the political spectrum. “I find it scandalous from a democratic point of view,” reacted LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on BFMTV. If LFI is in favor of “a tax reform so that the wealthy contribute more”, “trying to make people believe that it is a measure of tax justice to go after retirees who earn 2,000 euros per month, that seems really very dishonest to me,” he judged.
-Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet's proposal also aroused strong opposition from government supporters. The vice-president of Horizons Christian Estrosi deemed it “inadmissible” on RTL. “For all retirees, it’s the same rule. Because if we start to reach a retirement level, the door is open and little by little we will abuse it and go towards the weakest pensioners,” judged the mayor of Nice, a city popular with many retirees.
