People are living longer. Governments don’t have the money in the long term to pay pensions, so are increasing pension ages over time.
News a couple of weeks back showed this was happening again- in Bulgaria. But not in France.
With the previous government having negotiated hard to push up the state pension age from 60 to 62 (at 62, still one of the youngest retirement ages in Europe), the new French government is partially reversing the change.
It was a cheap way of getting elected- just promise to reduce pension ages again. And President Hollande has kept his promise.
Like a lot of Europe, France faces an ageing population. It also runs its pension systems on a Pay As You Go basis. So there’s less employed feeding more retired. Hollande’s estimate of the cost of pushing back on the pension age is €3 billion a year from 2017. In reality, it will be a lot more than that.
A cheap election promise, albeit selectively applied to the population, has sent all the wrong signals. France will have to raise its pension age in the same was as other countries have in recent years (Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland and, of course, the UK) and when it tries to, the riots will start again.
What price politics.
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