Retirement at 62 by amendment: a symbolic vote, a real social question

On Thursday 22 October, in the middle of the debate on the 2027 Social Security budget, the National Assembly adopted an amendment that reopens, through a back door, the most explosive issue of Emmanuel Macron's second term: the retirement age. According to LCP, the measure was passed by 45 votes to 36, with only 81 members voting.

What MPs voted for

The amendment, tabled by the Écologiste et social group and defended in the chamber by Sandrine Rousseau, creates what AFP describes as an "early retirement leave". An employee aged at least 62 with 42 years of contributions, or 168 quarters, could stop working before the legal age. Until that age, the employer would pay them an amount equivalent to their future full-rate pension. In return, the company would receive reductions in social contributions, meant to offset the cost euro for euro, according to LCP.

The scheme does not formally touch the 2023 reform, which is gradually raising the legal age to 64. It would allow workers with long and complete careers to get around it. It is worth recalling that this increase was already partly suspended by the 2026 Social Security budget: according to the official info-retraite portal, the rise is frozen until January 2028 for people born between 1964 and 1968, while those born from 1969 onwards remain subject to the age of 64.

The positions at stake

The government opposed it firmly. Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou called the burden "very heavy" for companies, LCP reports. His argument deserves a hearing: some employers might be tempted to let go of their older employees before they reach the threshold, which would run counter to the goal of keeping people over 55 in work. He told the authors of the amendment:

What have companies ever done to you? — Jean-Pierre Farandou, Labour Minister

The rapporteur general of the Social Security budget, Thibault Bazin (Droite républicaine), took a more technical line. According to LCP, he considers the measure symbolic and "not workable" in substance. According to AFP, he asked in particular what would happen to the employee if their employer were to disappear.

On the left, the ecologist group is calling it a victory and is asking the government not to erase this vote in the rest of the procedure, according to the AFP dispatch. For its supporters, the issue is simple: those who started working early and contributed for forty-two years should not be held back two more years.

A good question, a bad answer

What this vote expresses must be taken seriously. Three years after a reform adopted without a final vote in the Assembly, the question of long careers remains an open wound. Those who started young, often in physical jobs, are also those whose healthy life expectancy is shortest. A Republic committed to equality cannot answer them with an accounting equation alone.

But the chosen mechanism raises more problems than it solves. First, its cost has not been estimated, AFP acknowledges. Yet it relies on contribution exemptions, in other words on lower Social Security revenue, at a time when the government's bill plans to reduce its deficit from 21.8 billion euros in 2026 to 12.7 billion in 2027, according to NosParlementaires. Funding a social right by weakening the fund that must guarantee it is a weakness, not a solution.

Second, the scheme would make a right depend on the financial health of each company. An employee of a large group and one at a struggling small business would not be treated alike, and the question raised by Thibault Bazin about a failing employer remains unanswered. Finally, the calculation rules remain vague: for younger generations, 168 quarters do not match the period required for a full-rate pension, which the info-retraite portal sets at 172 quarters from the 1966 generation onwards. The text will have to say how the gap is handled.

Finally, there is the question of the sincerity of the debate. As LCP points out, adoption of the Social Security budget seems unlikely in an Assembly with no majority. The formal vote is scheduled for 27 October and, if Parliament does not decide within fifty days, that is by 26 November, the government could implement the text by ordinance, NosParlementaires recalls. In that case, as with the use of Article 49.3, this amendment is very likely to disappear. A vote destined to be erased feeds distrust more than it protects employees.

For a law on long careers, not a floor amendment

A sense of the State demands that an issue of this scale not be handled through an amendment passed by 81 MPs. It equally demands that it not be buried. The soundest path would be a dedicated bill on long careers and arduous work, examined after the budgets, with a public cost estimate from the Conseil d'orientation des retraites and openly assumed funding, rather than exemptions that drain Social Security.

The government is right to point out the flaws in the scheme. It would be wrong to see it as a mere parliamentary whim. The question raised on Thursday will remain on the table until 2027: what does the nation owe those who have already given forty-two years of work?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.