On 14 April 2023 France’s Constitutional Council upheld the core of the pension reform and Macron signed it into law: the legal retirement age rises from 62 to 64. What changes and what the Council struck down.
France’s Constitutional Council issued its decision on 14 April 2023 on the amending social security financing law for 2023, which contains the pension reform promoted by President Emmanuel Macron. It upheld the essentials, including raising the legal retirement age to 64, and rejected the objections about procedure: the government had put the reform through within a social security financing law, with limited time for debate. According to the Council, the combination of procedures was unusual but not unconstitutional in itself.
What the reform changes
The legal retirement age rises from 62 to 64 gradually, in steps of three months a year from 1 September 2023, until it reaches 64 in 2030. In addition, the increase in the contribution period needed for a full pension is accelerated, reaching 43 years in 2027 instead of 2035. The age at which the penalty for an incomplete pension disappears stays at 67 for private-sector employees, and early retirement is kept or extended for those who started work very young and for people with a disability or a recognised incapacity.
The law also sets a minimum pension of 85% of the minimum wage, around €1,200 a month for someone with a full career, which the government says affects some 20,000 people, and from September 2023 closes several special regimes to new employees, such as those for electricity and gas or the metro.
What the Council struck down
The Council annulled six provisions, or parts of them, on the grounds that they were “cavaliers sociaux”: measures with little connection to a social security financing law, which could not be included in it. They are the senior index (article 2), which required companies to publish data on the employment of older workers; the senior employment contract (article 3), a permanent contract with advantages for hiring people over 60; individual medical monitoring of workers exposed to occupational risks (part of article 17); the organisation of contribution collection (article 6); early retirement for certain civil servants (part of article 10); and an information system for insured people on the pay-as-you-go system (article 27).
On the same day, the Council rejected the request for a shared-initiative referendum that sought to fix the maximum legal age at 62: it considered that the text changed nothing, because 62 was the legal age when the request was filed. A second request, which adds a tax resource to fund the system while keeping the age at 62, will be decided on 3 May.
The reaction
Macron signed the law that same night, as Law 2023-270, and it was published in the Official Journal (Journal officiel) in the early hours of 15 April, which the opposition criticised as an attempt to slip it through unnoticed. The unions called demonstrations for 1 May and other actions on 20 and 28 April, and the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, called the signing a thoroughly shameful decision. There were incidents in several cities, with fires in the streets, on the night after the decision.
In Spain, the government approved its own pension reform on 16 March 2023, which works on the maximum contribution base and creates a solidarity levy for high salaries. For anyone working in France or with pension rights there, it is worth checking the timetable by year of birth and the exceptions for long careers. Ask your adviser how it affects you.
Retirement age is decided in parliament, in the street and, sometimes, in the Constitutional Council.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
