On April 14, the Elders finally gave their approval to the pension reform passed in force by the government thanks to article 49-3. After many weeks of debate, the text was validated by the Constitutional Council before being promulgated, in stride, by the President of the Republic. While the first shared initiative referendum was rejected and the second must be studied on May 3, the pension reform will face some new challenges before its implementation. Decrees are therefore necessary in order to comply with the legislation. When will they be published?
As soon as the text was validated by the Constitutional Council, Emmanuel Macron hastened to enact the pension reform. It must be said that the Head of State knows the path strewn with pitfalls reserved for a text of law, all the more so when it arouses such controversy. While the towel is still burning between the executive and the French, decrees are now essential in order to prepare for the entry into force of the reform next September. A major step, which is not without difficulty following the censorship of some articles of the text.
In fact, there are still things to be clarified through the planned application decrees. All the modalities must thus be expressed in order to guarantee the clarity of the text of the law. This contains, in fact, 98 times the word “decree”: it is still necessary that these can dispel certain doubts or come to specify devices. This is, for example, the case for the possibility of early retirement for a long career with amendments that refer to decrees.
Among the provisions that must be specified by decree, the terms of early departure are expected by people with professional incapacity. The generations impacted by the pension reform, born in 1962 and 1963, but eligible for the long career scheme, are also waiting to find out their departure conditions. For the time being, no precise date has been communicated in order to obtain this information.
In the cabinet of Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labour, it is rumored that around thirty decrees are necessary for the deadline desired by the executive to be met. Invited to CNEWS on Tuesday April 25, Olivier Dussopt therefore reaffirmed that “the implementation deadlines [will be] the same as for previous reforms”.
According to the statements made by the Minister of Labour, certain decrees have therefore been drafted or are in the process of being drafted. He thus explained himself by referring to “[the] first implementing decrees […] transmitted both to the various bodies to be consulted and to the legal department to be verified”. He added that he was making sure “to meet the deadlines and the publication schedule of the application deadlines”.
If the approximate dates of these highly anticipated decrees are still unknown, the Minister of Labor leaked some clues during a visit to Chartres. He thus expressed himself on the subject by affirming that the publication of the first decrees of the reform would be carried out by “end of May-beginning of June”. We will therefore have to wait a few more weeks to find out.