Barthélémy Philippe // Photo credit: Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 07:36, September 25, 2023

The 2024 budget sequence opens this week in Parliament. A moment that promises to be electric while the government wants to make savings, while financing new measures, including the revaluation of small pensions. So, to keep the balance, the executive wants to draw from the reserves of Agirc-Arrco.

What will be the budget of the France next year? The government is due to present its roadmap as early as Wednesday, and then a few days later it will present its social security financing bill. A sequence that promises to be electric between the majority and the opposition parties.

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A system in the green

In its quest for savings, the government covets the reserves of Agirc-Arrco, the supplementary pension fund for private sector employees. Because the finances of the regime are in the green, with 68 billion euros of reserves, and they must increase with the pension reform, which forces employees to work and contribute longer.

And the government understands that. It therefore plans to drain 1 to 3 billion euros per year from the coffers of the scheme to finance the revaluation of small pensions. A nonsense for the unions that manage with the employers, this regime.

Funds "filled thanks to our contributions"

"The government must stop considering that the coffers of Agirc-Arrco are its piggy bank to finance its good ideas of the moment," said Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the CGT. The coffers of Agirc-Arrco are filled thanks to our contributions and our salaries, they belong to the workers," she told reporters.

For its part, employers are more open provided that the government is not too greedy. The revaluation of small pensions will reach a maximum of 100 euros for a full full-time career. It is expected to affect 1.7 million current pensioners and 200,000 new pensioners each year.