The Senate, with a majority on the right, voted this Sunday in favor of the launch of a study on the addition of a dose of collective capitalization, during the examination of the pension reform. This system provides that employees and employers invest their contributions in investment funds, shares, bonds, etc. At the time of retirement, the employee receives a pension linked to the past performance of these investments.
The amendment, tabled by Senator Les Républicains Jean-François Husson, was adopted with 163 “for” and 126 “against”. The senators demand that the report be submitted by the government to Parliament before October. “The demographic movement is relentless, we will have fewer contributors and more beneficiaries, we have this duty to look at how the distribution system continues”, explained Jean-François Husson in the hemicycle. “It is an issue of social justice, it is first of all the remuneration of the most modest who will benefit from it”, he assured.
Three-stage rocket
The left opposed it. “You don’t trust this pay-as-you-go system so much anymore that you want to see capitalization systems coming,” criticized socialist Monique Lubin. “It is a question of delivering hundreds of billions to pension funds, to the market”, was indignant the ecologist Raymonde Poncet-Monge, believing that the pay-as-you-go system was the most supportive and efficient.
The president of the LR group, Bruno Retailleau, explained: “We could have a three-stage rocket: the intergenerational base (of the pay-as-you-go system), the second stage is supplementary pensions and the last stage is by capitalization” . Communists and ecologists have made fun of this metaphor, recalling that in a rocket the first stage “is the first to be abandoned”, in favor of the ascent of the last.
Elisabeth Doineau (UDI), the general rapporteur, expressed an unfavorable opinion on the report, but considered the question “interesting”, because “the younger generations do not believe in the financing of our system”. Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt also recalled that “the government has chosen not to open the debate on capitalization”.