The pension reform could spell the end of the special regimes of the RATP and energy.
Gabriel Attal, Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, confirmed this Sunday on France 3: the government wants to promote the “convergence of special regimes”.
New entrants may therefore not benefit from the advantages offered by these two regimes currently in the spotlight.
Not all employees are affected
At RATP, the special pension scheme concerns all employees recruited under the status.
They are about 40,000, against 5,500 in CDI of private law.
On the other hand, only certain categories of personnel benefit from specific measures allowing early retirement.
These are drivers, station agents, security agents, control agents and personnel in charge of track maintenance.
In the electricity and gas industries, the special pension scheme covered 176,129 pensioners in 2021, for 135,497 contributors, i.e. all employees in the sector.
Early departures less and less frequent
RATP staff covered by this special scheme and who can benefit from early retirement, are authorized to open rights ten years before the employees of the general scheme, i.e. 52 years old today.
If the retirement age is raised to 64, theirs would therefore automatically be raised.
The only conditions: to have at least 27 years of service and to have been recruited between 18 and 35 years old.
In reality, very few agents exercise their rights at age 52 because of too great a discount.
To benefit from a full pension, an employee must contribute 168 quarters, or 42 years, as much as for the general scheme.
Some agents also benefit from a bonus year for every five years contributed, within the limit of five bonuses.
For example, an agent with twenty-seven years of service will actually have validated 32 years with his pension fund.
This advantage was abolished during the reform of the special schemes in 2008, for all employees recruited from 1 January 2009. An RATP metro driver leaves on average at 55.8 years old and a bus driver at 56. 1 year.
Among electricians and gas workers, the average retirement age in 2021 was 60, a figure that hides some disparities.
Some 47.2% of employees benefited from hardship measures that year and were able to claim their retirement rights earlier, at age 58 on average.
A proportion that is dwindling, year after year.
They were 54% in 2016. Especially since this advantage was also removed during the 2008 reform.
A retirement calculated on the very end of the career
At RATP, the amount of the retirement pension is calculated like that of civil servants, i.e. by taking into account the last six months of salary, against the best 25 years in the private sector.
At full rate, it represents 75% of these last six salaries.
This is also the case for EDF agents, provided that they have all their annuities and that they have spent their entire career in the electricity and gas industry sector.
One fund in deficit, the other in surplus
The CRP, the pension fund for RATP agents, which compensated 35,076 people in 2021, is very largely in deficit.
In 2023, the State will pay it a subsidy of 810 million euros in order to keep it in balance, after 753 million euros in 2022.
Conversely, the national fund for electricity and gas industries generated a surplus result of some 210 million euros in 2021.
This surplus is mainly due to receipts from the transmission tariff contribution (CTA), a tax levied on electricity and gas bills and which is pointed out by certain critics of this special regime.
Its defenders point out that it represents only part of the financing of this special scheme, also supplemented by higher contributions than in the general scheme, both for employees and employers.
It is only one of the many taxes and contributions affecting energy, which together represent around a third of private electricity or natural gas bills.
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