Emmanuel Macron will give up his lifetime pension of 6.220 euros gross monthly (approximately 5,200 net) after leaving the presidency of the Republic.
The decision, revealed by the daily Le Parisien and confirmed on Sunday by the Elysee palace, it is a symbolic gesture in the midst of conflict by the pension reform in France. It seeks to demonstrate that the equality of treatment during the retirement and the abolition of privileges applies to before to nobody the head of State.
The reform has been motivated, from the 5 of December, three great days of nationwide protests and an indefinite strike in public transport that is affecting the movements of the French in the holidays. In January, the Government and the trade unions are back in negotiations.
The law of 3 April 1955, approved prior to the foundation of the fifth Republic, established that former heads of State receive, upon leaving office, a salary equivalent to that of a member of the Council of State.
on The 11th of December, to present the details of the pension reform, the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, explained that in the future the officers should be subject to the same rules that the rest of the French. Le Parisien, on the basis of this statement, asked the Elysee palace if that was true for president. And this led to the affirmative answer of the presidency and the announcement of the end of this privilege.
The French presidency presented the waiver of the annuity as a logical consequence of the pension reform. One of the cornerstones of the reform is the unification in a single system, the same for all workers, from the current 42 pension schemes. Some of these regimes, the so-called “special”, which include benefits with the possibility for railway workers to retire at 52 years old. The law of 1955, even if it is applied to the single person of the president of the Republic, could be included in the category of “special regimes” designed to disappear.
System for points
“The pension reform will be applied [to the president] and you will not receive, at the end of its mandate, the sums provided for by the law of 1955”, confirmed a source in the Elysee palace. “The provisions of the act of 1955 will eventually normalise. The president of the Republic will converge as well, according to the modalities that quickly will be studied, to the universal system by points planned for all the French”.
This system provides for a new method of calculation of the pension, by using points that are accumulated throughout the working life. It shall apply from the generation that now has 44 years old; Macron fulfilled the sabbath 42.
The choice of Macron is a gesture of “exemplarity and consistency”, according to the Elysée, and is accompanied by the decision, already announced prior to accessing the presidency in 2017, to resign as a high official in the State. The president has also resigned to join the Constitutional Council once you leave the office. Neither Nicolas Sarkozy nor François Hollande, his predecessors, immediate, feel in this body, although they would have the right to do so.
The gesture was received with skepticism by part of the opposition. “It is intolerable: only the great lords, the very rich and the important can afford this kind of donations”, he reacted by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Insumisa, the party of the populist left. The suspicion is that Macron used his resignation as an argument to impose sacrifices their countrymen. “It’s okay for the president to waive one of their privileges,” said the leader of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, “but the retirement of the French it is not.”
