Squaring the circle. How to support purchasing power – particularly that of retirees –, while controlling public spending, while France is experiencing a heavier deficit than expected? This last point also raises eyebrows at the European Commission.
It will be one of the challenges on the agenda of the new government team formed after the second round of the early legislative vote on July 7.
The New Popular Front, for its part, recommends indexation not on inflation – that is to say the rise in prices, but on wages. The latter would themselves be indexed to inflation and potentially affected by an increase in the minimum wage to 1,600 euros net (compared to 1,399 currently).
A rule… Not always applied
What exactly do such decisions imply in the calculation of your retirement pensions? Until now, as recalled in this note from the Ifrap institute dated June 25, the coefficient allowing the revaluation of general system pensions is set each year on January 1. In principle, it is already linked to the evolution of prices since it fluctuates according to the average of the evolution of consumer prices excluding tobacco. But this rule is not always respected.
There can thus be des gels – pensions are then not revalued – or else revaluations lower than price increases. This was the case in 2019 and 2020 (with, in the latter case, a differentiated revaluation depending on the amount of pensions). .
Furthermore, the supplementary pensionsbut also the social minima can be – or not – indexed to inflation.
The effects on your purchasing power
If this is the case, and you have no other sources of income, then this means that your purchasing power is decreasing. However, this subject constitutes the main concern of the French and therefore a major electoral issue.
Despite these subtleties, “the average pension of all retirees from French pension plans increases over the years despite a slow-down observed in recent years”, note the authors of a report from the Pension Orientation Council (Cor) dating from January 2023.
As a reminder, your basic pension is calculated by taking into account your average annual income over the 25 most advantageous years of your career – with certain detailed adjustments notably on this page of the government site service-public.fr
