What the government says
Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet said on Tuesday that “financing social protection today falls too much on businesses and workers”. As a result, “there are different taxes and contributions that could be considered for retirees who can afford it”, starting from a pension level which would be set at 2,000 or 2,500 euros. Such a contribution could bring in around 500 or around 800 million euros, depending on the threshold chosen.
Before her, the Minister of Labor, Health and Solidarity Catherine Vautrin had put forward the idea of seven hours of free work during the year, also to finance social protection. Expected return: 2 billion.
But these two ideas do not reflect “the government's position at this stage”, government spokesperson Sophie Primas cut short Wednesday, after an outcry in the political class, by referring to “parliamentary discussions” on budgets. 2025. Vice-president of the group of Macronist deputies in the National Assembly, Mathieu Lefèvre had castigated “two anti-work ideas” on Tuesday on X.
What are the reactions?
“Work seven hours more without additional pay, tax retirees who have worked their whole lives, no and three times no! Work must pay,” he insisted. The vice-president of Horizons Christian Estrosi judged the proposal on pensions “inadmissible” on RTL.
“Taxing retirees who have 2,000 euros of pension” is “totally scandalous”, said the vice-president of the RN Sébastien Chenu on TF1, suggesting that this would be a reason for censorship from the government. The RN had notably censured the Barnier government because of its plan to under-index pensions in relation to inflation.
-At the other end of the political spectrum, LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard considered it “very dishonest” to “try to make people believe that it is a measure of tax justice to go after retirees who earn 2,000 euros per month. “Since retirees are the ones who vote the most and there are more and more of them, a certain number of proposals are suicides and no one is going to make them,” said an elected official from the central bloc in recent days. .
“110 billion” of efforts to the French
However, believes the economist Olivier Redoulès, of the liberally inspired Rexecode institute, there is on the part of political leaders “a form of disconnection, almost a fool's game in explaining that we could not touch the pensions” given the level of public finance debt. “The mass of wealth that is mobilized to support the standard of living of retirees is disproportionate and that burdens other private and public spending”, for example in education or the ecological transition, he says.
Éric Heyer, director of the analysis and forecasting department of the OFCE, criticizes “the method”: “Every day, we put forward a new avenue, a new tax and, of course, the person who must pay it says ' 'why me?' » To reduce the public deficit, currently at 6.1%, to 3% in five years, we must ask the French for “110 billion” in efforts, and “say that everyone contributes”, including retirees, before finding in a second step “the tax or public expenditure to achieve this”. “There, we first advance a tax and we don’t know why,” he criticizes.
