‘We must work longer’: Macron prepares to fight for French pension reform

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French President Emmanuel Macron will this week continue his long-promised and unpopular plan to reform his country’s costly pension system by raising the retirement age, risking renewed street protests and a backlash from political opponents.

On Tuesday, his government will present its bill, which is expected to require French citizens to work two or three years beyond the current retirement age of 62 to qualify for a full pension. In a bid to win support, the government will also offer sweeteners, such as increasing minimum pensions and benefits for seniors with physically demanding jobs.

But with unions pledging to strike over any increase in the retirement age and far-left and far-right parties poised to challenge reforms, the fight is shaping up to be a test of whether Macron can deliver on the agenda of his second term. Pensions have become a sectarian issue for the French president, a symbol of his reform ambitions and his ability to enact policies despite losing his parliamentary majority last year.

Macron’s centrist coalition now holds 251 seats in the National Assembly – short of the 289 threshold needed to pass laws – so it has become more difficult to pass legislation.

Even Macron’s allies admit the stakes are high and the potential for social unrest high because families are already feeling the pressure from rising inflation and an economic slowdown. Opinion polls show that about 70 percent of French people oppose raising the retirement age.

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“If this reform is not passed, it is likely to complicate the president’s second term as some may see it as a sign of weakness,” said Marc Ferracci, an MP for Macron’s Ennahda party. “But I don’t think that’s what will happen. I think we will get something even if the exact parameters change.”

Renewing France’s pension system has been one of the main pillars of Macron’s re-election campaign, and it comes after he tried a different version of reform in 2019 that was abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The French president argues that raising the retirement age is the only way to preserve a system in which the ratio of workers to pensioners falls in the coming decades. He ruled out other approaches such as raising taxes, reducing pensions or increasing public debt.

“We must work longer,” he said in his televised New Year’s address. The aim of the reform was to “strengthen the pension system, which, if we do nothing, will be under threat because we will be dependent on debt to finance it”.

The government also argues that raising the retirement age is necessary to improve France’s relatively poor record of keeping older people in the workforce. The employment rate for those ages 55-64 is 56 percent, compared to an average of 59 percent in European Union countries and 61 percent across the OECD group of advanced economies. Only about half of the French are still working when they hit 62.

A man holds a sign reading “No to Macron’s pension reform” at a demonstration in Toulouse last September © Frederic Scheiber / Hans Lucas / Reuters

The state pension system, which relies on workers funding retiree benefits, will run a slight budget surplus this year, according to a recent report by a state pension advisory committee. But a deficit is expected in the next decade and beyond as the number of workers per retiree falls from 2.1 in 2000 to 1.7 in 2020 and is projected to reach 1.2 by 2070.

The report added that without reform, spending on pensions could eventually threaten the government’s deficit-cutting goals, meaning France would break EU debt ceiling rules.

Macron’s opponents disagree with both his diagnosis and his treatment of pensions. Left-wing parties are calling for lowering the retirement age to 60 and raising taxes to fund it. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen declared her “extreme opposition” to raising the retirement age and called Macron’s proposals “terribly unfair and ineffective”, especially for blue-collar workers who start working at a young age.

The only opposition party open to supporting Macron’s bill is the conservative Les Républicains, which has long advocated raising the retirement age to 64 or 65 to shore up public finances.

But in a meeting with Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne on Friday, Olivier Marlix, who heads the LR group of 62 deputies in the National Assembly, put forward specific demands that must be met to secure their votes.

Olivier Marlix of the opposition Les Républicains party, which has long advocated raising the retirement age to 64 or 65 to boost public finances. © Julien de Rosa / AFP / Getty Images

It included raising the retirement age to 64 from 65, while gradually extending the time to work for a full pension. LR also wants to increase the minimum monthly pension to around €1,200 from around €900 and apply the change to current and future retirees.

“I told the prime minister either this will pass our votes or it won’t pass at all,” Marlix said in an interview.

If no agreement is reached with LR, the government will likely resort to passing the Pensions Bill by decree, using Article 49.3 of the Constitution. This tactic, which is rarely used, allows governments to bypass parliament and in effect ignore lawmakers, but it also allows the opposition to respond with no confidence. Macron’s government has used constitutional maneuvering 10 times on budget bills since June.

“Our aim is not to activate Article 49.3, but to build consensus on a majority vote,” Labor Minister Olivier Dussopp told Le Parisien last week.

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