Macron scraps plan to raise retirement age
PARIS >> With tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators again coursing through the streets of Paris and other cities and clouds of tear gas and smashed store windows punctuating the urban landscape, the French government made a major concession Saturday to unions protesting its pension reform plan.
It agreed to scrap, for now at least, a proposal to raise the full-benefits retirement age from 62 to 64. Unlike in the United States, the French government plays a huge role in the retirement plans of individuals in France, both as a source of funds and as overseer and guarantor of the pension system.
The raised age had infuriated moderate unions that the government of President Emmanuel Macron badly needs on its side. Macron has insisted the French need to work longer to strengthen a generous retirement system that is one of the world’s most generous but may be heading toward a $19 billion deficit.
On Saturday, with a crippling transport strike already in its sixth week, Macron’s government backed down, announcing that it would “withdraw” the new age limit, and put off decisions on financing the system until it gets a report on the money problem “between now and the end of April.”
But the government did not entirely rule out the idea of reintroducing a new retirement age if funding solutions to the pensions deficit are not reached.
Macron has insisted that his retirement plan represents a fair, rational response to the new world of work, where careers are interrupted and French citizens no longer stay in the same job for life.
The plan would replace the current system of 42 different pension regimes, most tailored to match individual professions, with a single, points-based system that will be the same for everybody. Workers would accumulate points, then cash them in. Bus drivers in Toulouse would get the same retirement benefits as those in Paris — not now the case, as the Paris system has some of the country’s most generous benefits.