The return to balance by 2030. The promise, hammered home by the government during the last pension reform, has already made pschitt. According to the report of the Pensions Orientation Council (COR), the body responsible for calculating the financial outlook for the system, which was made public on Thursday, June 22, the objective will not be achieved: the deficit should be between 0.2 % and 0.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, i.e. approximately 5 to 8 billion euros, depending on the scenarios.
After having fought to impose the lowering of the retirement age to 64, and the acceleration of the contribution period, the government could almost be disappointed with the result… Of course, without the pension reform, which limits the number of retirees and curbing spending, the deficit would have been much larger. But how to explain this discrepancy between government announcements and COR forecasts?
When questioned, the COR kicked into touch during the press conference presenting the report. On the side of the Ministry of Labour, it evokes the impact of rising prices, because wages, unlike retirement pensions, do not follow inflation, which reduces the base of contributions.
Another hypothesis, mentioned by the economist Michael Zemmour, lecturer at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and specialist in pensions: part of the difference would be due… to a calculation error in the impact study ! A point he had already raised in an article published on his blog in March.
“The government’s impact study was based on the Stability Program, which already included the pension reform in the wage bill and therefore in the contributions paid,” he explains. However, by reading the government’s impact study, “these gains are counted again: this creates a gap of the order of 3 to 4 billion euros”, says the economist.
Another hypothesis, “the government has added accompanying measures as the reform progresses, this deficit is therefore not illogical”, underlines René-Paul Savary, senator LR and member of the COR. But the executive had announced that it had managed to cover all these additional expenses at the end of the process, with a table detailing the sources of funding.
A debate that reminds us that forecasts are always to be taken with a grain of salt. They are based on numerous economic assumptions, which may vary, turn out to be optimistic or pessimistic. As we explained in a previous article, the macroeconomic assumptions chosen by the government, for example (growth in productivity and unemployment) are proving to be optimistic.
Some also criticize the COR for concealing part of the deficit. According to François Bayrou, 30 billion euros are missing each year. In a study published on Wednesday June 21 by the Molinari Institute, a liberal-inspired think tank, a total of 882 billion euros of deficit would have been “forgotten”, because filled by state subsidies, since 2002. The association Safeguarding Pensions had calculated for Le Point a financing need of around 65.1 billion.
