Every morning, Etienne Lefebvre decrypts one of the most important economic news of the day.

Jean-Paul Delevoye unveiled yesterday his pension reform plan. Is this really the big bang announced?

So yes, it's really an in-depth reform, not an umpteenth replastering. If the government goes ahead, we will have a single regime - today's 42 - and broadly harmonized rights: age of departure, contribution rate, family benefits, reversals, and so on. etc. Exit the rule of 25 best years to calculate the retirement in the private and the last 6 months in the public. The whole career will count. Another example: today you have many officials who can leave at age 57, for two-thirds of them, it will not be possible. Will be concerned only the police and the firemen, trades considered "dangerous", and the air controllers, that one understands less well. For others, for example caregivers, it will be the same rules as in the private sector. So all this will take time, twenty years, but yes it's a big bang.

Except that the opponents say: all that is dressing. The real goal is to raise the retirement age to 64 ...

This is not the goal, it is the means to succeed in reform. Let me explain: if we do nothing, pensions will go down in the next thirty years. It's mechanical because the fees you accumulate each year are indexed to inflation. So they are progressing slower than wages. With the reform, they will be indexed to wages, which guarantees a high level of pensions. But to finance that, and to harmonize rights rather than upwards, we must encourage people to work longer. And without delay.

But why did the government exclude any measure of economy in 2020?

It is a political gesture vis-à-vis the CFDT. On a site as explosive, it's clever. And then anyway, it would have been difficult to change the rules at the last moment for people who are preparing for retirement. But the figures are stubborn: it lacks 10 billion euros by 2025. For the universal plan to be born in equilibrium, it is necessary that at this date, the age of the full rate is set to 64 years. It means that you can always leave before, but with a penalty. Only to reach 64 in 2025, we can not hang out. When Nicolas Sarkozy raised the legal age of departure from 60 to 62, it was over five years. Do the math, it means new haircuts from 2021. Emmanuel Macron will have to redo his pedagogy to "work more" quickly enough.