The government is distilling, day after day, the elements of the austerity cure that is being prepared. He has just announced the postponement until 1is July of the indexation of basic pensions.
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What has the government announced?
A postponement of the annual revaluation of basic pensions (excluding supplementary pensions). Normally, basic pensions are recalculated every year on 1is January, depending on inflation. It will be « the 1is July 2025”, announces the Ministry of the Economy. Seventeen million retirees are affected, beneficiaries of the general scheme or other schemes, such as that of the Civil Service.
What consequences?
The revaluation at 1is July 2025 will not be “not retroactive”, indicates Bercy. In other words, the loss of purchasing power, over the months of January to June 2025, would not be made up in July. And the revaluation itself would be lower.
Why a potentially lower revaluation?
To understand, we must remember how the increase in the basic pension is calculated. It is based on the average inflation for one year, observed two months before the revaluation. For the indexation initially planned for January 2025, the reference month would therefore have been October 2024. And the revaluation could have been “around 2.3% or 2.4%”, had calculated the CFDT for retirees. With the postponement, the reference month would no longer be October 2024 but May 2025. However, inflation is currently slowing. If this trend continues, the calculation would not give 2.3%, but much less. Questioned, Bercy evokes a revaluation in July “a priori of 1.8%”.
Why this measure?
It is part of the vast savings plan planned by the government in the 2025 budget, in order to stem the drift in accounts. To reduce the deficit to 5% of gross domestic product, the State must now find “sixty billion”. This new estimate takes into account the fact that without new measures, the deficit would have been “greater than 6%”.
Where to find these sixty billion?
The State is firstly counting on forty billion in spending cuts (twenty for the State, thirteen for Social Security, seven billion for local authorities). He also wants to increase revenues by twenty billion. Among the tracks, to the tune of 1.5 billion, are “benefits in kind for thermal vehicles, the penalty for very polluting vehicles, and elements on the taxation of particularly polluting transport”. Bercy did not specify the expected savings from the postponement of pension indexation.
