On April 14, 2023, the text of the pension reform was promulgated by Emmanuel Macron after the essentials had been validated by the Elders of the Constitutional Council. Certain points such as the Senior CDI have been censored. This decision and its almost immediate publication in the Official Journal angered unions and opposition politicians. Several mobilizations were then announced.
At the time of the verdict of the Constitutional Council, improvised demonstrations took place. Asked at the microphone of BFMTV during this meeting, Sophie Binet, general secretary of the CGT, announced that the intersyndicale “give[ed] an appointment to all French men and women on May 1”. She then spoke of an “unprecedented exceptional mobilization for a popular tidal wave”. The four SNCF unions also called for two days of “expressing railway anger” on April 20 and 28. However, if Emmanuel Macron had announced that he wanted to apply it this year, no specific date had been announced after the response of the Constitutional Council.
During his interview given to the TF 1 and France 2 newspaper, Emmanuel Macron spoke for the first time about his reform since the use of 49.3 by Elisabeth Borne. During this interview, he reaffirmed the need to change the current pension system. Moreover, he admitted to wanting to implement the reform this year and even mentioned next fall. Moreover, when the law was published on the government site, on the night of April 14 to 15, a first date was announced.
On the Official Journal, we can read that the amending social security financing law for 2023 “enters into force on September 1, 2023”. However, some administrative officers considered that this timetable could not be kept. However, questioned at the microphone of FranceInfo, Renaud Villard, director general of the National old-age insurance fund (Cnav), already mentioned the rest of the steps if this text is definitively adopted. Small retirement pensions would notably be revalued next September. But, is this date confirmed? Would the government deny the impossibility of such rapid application?
Invited on the set of CNEWS on April 25, 2023, Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labor, confirmed the date of September 1 for the entry into force of the reform. Confident, the latter denied the problems of calendar raised by the unions and agents of the administration.
“We are within implementation deadlines which are the same as those we had known for the previous reforms”, he specified then. The Minister then added that the first decrees were sent the week of April 17 to the services in charge of their consultation. “We are making sure to meet the deadline and the timetable for the publication of the implementing decrees”, he ends up concluding. Nevertheless, will the pension funds in charge of applying this law be able to follow the announced timetable? Why do some consider the latter untenable?
The unions were the first to react to the announcement of the timetable for the application of the pension reform. Indeed, invited on LCI on April 11, Laurent Berger, secretary general of the CFDT, referred to the government’s calendar as “a real mess […] because the infrastructure is not there”. Nevertheless, the executive does not seem to reason in this way.
Reaffirming the words of Renaud Villard, the Minister of Labor mentioned having exchanged with the National Old Age Insurance Fund (CNAV). He then considered that there was nothing to fear and that everything would be in place for this date of September 1. “Since March 22, I have authorized this fund to carry out recruitments, including reinforcements to answer the questions which are obviously more numerous when there is a reform, and to allow its implementation in good conditions”, he specified to Laurence Ferrari this Tuesday, April 25.
The pension reform should therefore be applied from September 1, 2023.
