During a debate with Jordan Bardella and Olivier Faure, Thursday on France 2, Gabriel Attal announced the launch of a retirement simulator.
The site, called maretraitenupes.fr and no longer available at the address indicated for “technical reasons”, simulates the amount of pensions in the event of a New Popular Front majority in the Assembly.
After verification, the tool is not reliable.
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The information under scrutiny
How much will your pension be if the New Popular Front wins the legislative elections? This is the question answered, according to Gabriel Attal, by a simulator launched on June 27 and announced during the debate between the Prime Minister and Jordan Bardella (RN) and Olivier Faure (NFP) on France 2.
“You put in the amount of your retirement and you see how much your CSG will increase and how much less retirement that will give you”promises the leader of the presidential majority. This simulator,”moved to another domain name for technical reasons” this Friday at 7 p.m., and whose calculation is based on the CSG, is it reliable?
The CSG varies depending on “the situation of the person concerned”
The CSG or generalized social contribution is defined, according to vie-publique.fr, as “a social levy allocated to financing social protection which is levied on earned income, replacement income (retirement pension, unemployment benefit, for example), property income and investment income”.
Deducted at source, its rate, if we refer to INSEE, varies “depending on the type of income and the situation of the person concerned” and serves to “finance part of Social Security expenses”.
The simulator mentioned by Gabriel Attal which, as confirmed by the legal notices, is at the initiative of the presidential party, “is based on the progressive CSG proposed by an amendment tabled by NUPES deputies”.
This text, tabled on February 2, 2023 on the Social Security amending financing bill for 2023, was rejected.
Led by the socialists Jérôme Guedj and Olivier Faure, it aimed, according to “the summary statement” proposed by the National Assembly, “to establish a progressive CSG with 7 different rates (from 0% up to 4,900 euros of income up to 13.2% beyond 79,000 euros of income)”.
After entering the amount of his retirement in the simulator, the user sees the amount he would receive “with a majority of NUPES/NFP deputies” and the amount, in euros, of pension lost each year.
Since the Renaissance simulator only asks one question, it cannot be exact
Pascal Caillaud, CNRS researcher
However, inconsistencies are quickly pointed out: “Currently the CSG rate on retirement pensions depends on three elements: the place of residence, the number of tax shares and the person’s reference tax income”explains Pascal Caillaud, CNRS research fellow in social law with our partner Les Surligneurs. “Since the Renaissance simulator only asks one question (the net monthly pension), it cannot be accurate”he observes.
To continue, abnormally different results were noted. This problem, which was notably highlighted by Manuel Bompard on X, is, after having been reproduced internally, still present (see image).
This phenomenon can be explained by the way the site was designed. According to the source code of the site maretraitenupes.fr, the designers of the simulator started from the principle that the progressive scale of the CSG, proposed in the 2023 amendment, works by thresholds and not by tranches.
An error which can be explained by the fact that the current CSG system is governed by a logic of thresholds, but which threw Jérôme Guedj, one of the authors of the amendment, off his hinges: “What bad faith. Obviously my amendment introduces a logic of progressivity with brackets, as for income tax, which explains why the simulator provides crazy amounts!”commented the outgoing MP to Release.
Although the progressive CSG does appear in the New Popular Front programme (page 12), the movement has not provided any details regarding the costing and breakdown of the latter.
To summarize, the amendment on which the tool is based is not part of the program announced by the coalition. Renaissance cannot therefore rely on any reliable data to offer its simulator.
The simulator finally allows you to enter amounts lower than 1600 euros when the NFP program (page 4) promises “to increase the contributory minimum (retirement pension for a full career) to the level of the minimum wage and the old-age minimum to the level of the poverty threshold”. A minimum wage that the left-wing union has planned to raise to 1600 euros net. It should therefore not be possible to enter amounts lower than this sum.
Following the various reports, Manuel Bompard announced on June 28 on his X account that the New Popular Front was going to “initiate emergency proceedings for disseminating false information against Renaissance”.
Do you have any questions or would you like to submit information that you do not believe to be reliable? Do not hesitate to write to us at [email protected]. You can also find us on Twitter: our team is there behind the account @verif_TF1LCI.
