The countdown begins. The pension reform, which is due to come into effect on September 1, is revealed a little more thanks to the publication of six new decrees in the Official Journal this Friday morning. After the texts relating to special schemes and long careers, the Ministry of Labor has once again tackled several emblematic measures of the reform, including the revaluation of small pensions and the extension of the progressive retirement system.
The government had made this one of its main arguments: the minimum pensions of new retirees who will liquidate their entitlement from September 1, 2023 will be increased to 100 euros per month. The Ministry of Labor expects 200,000 new beneficiary retirees per year, including employees, tradesmen and even farmers. Either a new “retirement out of four”, underlines the ministry. Current retirees will not be left out, as the executive had promised after several weeks of procrastination. Nearly 1.7 million retirees from the general, agricultural and religious systems will see their pensions increased in autumn 2023, or at the latest in spring 2024, with retroactive effect from September 1. Note that the minimum pension will now be indexed to the minimum wage, and no longer to inflation as it had been so far.
Like the postponement of the legal age and the minimum pension, the consideration of professional wear and tear had been at the heart of the debates during the adoption of the reform. On this topic, the government did not start out winning: as soon as he came to power in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had hastened to lighten the Personal prevention and hardship account (C3P) created in 2014 from several criteria of hardship, among which carrying heavy loads or chemical hazards. If the decree published this Friday does not provide for the reintroduction of these criteria, it nevertheless intends to “improve” the personal prevention account (C2P), by lowering the thresholds linked to the risk factors “night work” and “work in successive shifts alternating”. The acquisition of rights in the event of polyexposure is also reinforced: the number of points acquired will increase in proportion to the number of risk factors to which the employee is exposed.
Above all, holders of the personal prevention account will be able, from September 1, 2023, to benefit from a professional retraining project. “This new use will make it possible to follow professional training without loss of remuneration and thus to be able to get out of situations of exposure to risk factors”, argues the government. The text records the creation of the Investment Fund for the Prevention of Professional Wear and Tear (FIPU), intended to improve prevention of “ergonomic” occupational risk factors (painful postures, mechanical vibrations, etc.). Endowed with one billion euros over five years, the organization will aim to finance prevention and awareness-raising initiatives at the level of companies and professional branches.
The salvo of decrees published this Friday also relates to the devices of progressive retirement and accumulation employment-retirement, both modified by the reform. The first, which allows you to reduce professional activity at the end of your career and receive part of your retirement before the legal retirement age, will be extended to civil servants and liberal professionals. As for the combined employment-retirement system, it will gain in attractiveness, thanks to the opening of new pension rights. Concretely, employees who continue to work after their retirement may, under certain conditions, request a “second pension”, calculated on the same basis as the first pension. As a reminder, the income earned within the framework of the accumulation of employment and retirement did not previously give rise to any additional pension.
The Ministry of Labor finally unveils the contours of the old-age insurance for carers, another innovation brought about by the reform. Parents of disabled children whose disability rate is less than 80% – and who are eligible for the supplement to the disabled child’s education allowance – will now be eligible for pension rights under the general scheme. This provision also includes carers of “non-cohabiting” disabled adults, regardless of their family relationship with the person being cared for.
“These decrees concretize new rights and put an end to certain inequalities which prevailed until then”, comments Olivier Dussopt, craftsman of the reform, on the sidelines of the text. The details of the reform are now known to the social partners and pension funds, it remains to prepare for the crucial deadline of the start of the school year. Dismissing any risk of confusion, the National Old Age Insurance Fund (Cnav) wants to be serene. “We will be ready for September 1,” assured France Info the director general of CNAV Renaud Villard on August 1.
