Work on a possible new pension reform got under way at Matignon on Friday 17 January, but the actual consultation process will not really begin for a few more weeks. The Prime Minister, Mr François Bayrou, judged it necessary for the debate that a new report be submitted beforehand, in order to be able to “draw on an indisputable set of facts and figures“. Many have noted that this report was entrusted to the Cour des comptes (Court of Audit), rather than to the Conseil d’orientation des retraites (COR, Pensions Advisory Council), the body that has normally been responsible by law, since its creation in 2000, for establishing and making public the consensus among the various stakeholders (the State, trade unions and employers’ organisations, members of parliament, qualified experts) on the financial situation of the pension system and on fairness between contributors – which it does through an annual report based on the projection models of government administrations and pension schemes’ statistical services, the latest edition of which was published in June 2024. The Prime Minister has, moreover, already mentioned, in his general policy statement, a gap between the pension system’s spending and resources that he estimates at €55 billion, which is more than the €11 billion (0.4 percentage points of GDP) cited in the COR’s 2025 report.
This wish to establish a “truth about the figures” based on estimates other than those produced and published by the COR had already been expressed at the end of 2022 in a note by the Haut-Commissaire au Plan (High Commissioner for Planning) – a position held at the time by none other than the current Prime Minister. What should we make of this debate, and what is at stake?
