The return to balance of pension plans is provisionally, deficits having to reappear, in a sustainable manner, from 2023, according to the annual report of the pension orientation council, which must be published on September 15 and that “Le Monde” was able to consult in an almost final version.
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The retirement system has become surplus in 2021, but this upturn will not last, leaving room, from 2023, to a deficit situation over a little more than ten years, at least. This is one of the rather unexpected lessons in the annual report of the pension orientation council (COR), which must be made public Thursday, September 15 and that Le Monde was able to obtain in an almost final version. This inventory was particularly expected, in particular by the executive which displayed its desire for reform, the first changes being announced for the summer of 2023 with a possible raising of the age of rights to a pension.
After having plunged into red under the effect of the health crisis, the accounts of the pension system have improved very clearly: deficits up to 13 to 14 billion euros in 2020, they are ironed in the green , in 2021, with a positive balance of 900 million euros. The surplus could be even greater in 2022 (+ 3.2 billion euros). This positive trend holds – of course – at the rebound of economic activity, which stimulated the contribution return and allowed to the various regimes, taken in their entirety, to fully fill the “hole”.
But the imbalances should again arise, with a significant degradation between 2023 and 2027. To scrutinize the developments to come over the next five decades, the COR has modified its method by building projections with two different conventions (instead of three, so far) and with a range of hypotheses in terms of lower productivity growth than before (between + 0.7 % and + 1.6 % per year on average, against + 1 % and + 1.8 %).
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In the most favorable case, the system would return to balance in the mid -2030s. But if we retain as a convention that which corresponds to the current rules and uses, the resorption of the deficit would be more distant: ” mid-2050 “, according to the report, provided that productivity increases by 1.6 % per year.
The report recalls that the notion of balance (synonymous either of deficit, or excess or balance) conceals “limits” when used to assess the future: it is based on “projections of resources “which can be called into question by decisions of the executive. Consequently, to “assess the financial sustainability” of the device, the COR rather evokes the share of expenditure in GDP because it expresses “the level of samples which must be made on the wealth produced (…) to ensure the balance of the balance of the balance of System “: In 2021, this proportion amounted to 13.8 % of GDP, decreasing by almost a point compared to 2020.
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