First of all, I would like to remind you that I expressed my hostility to this pension reform in these columns as early as February 2023 (in an article entitled “What was he going to do in this mess?”): “Why undermine the credibility of the State and weaken the current quinquennium to the end with a pension reform? And if we really wanted to do it, why not stick to the much more logical reform already partly voted, introducing a points-based system? And why not open France up to what all other countries are doing, and which the French want, at least in a complementary way: funded retirement? I can’t think of any other explanation than this: we promised to make this reform, and we embarked on it because it was apparently the easiest to carry out. A bit like the drunk who looks for his keys under a lamppost, not because he’s lost it there, but because there’s a light there.”
And I added: “It’s time to turn the page, to move on as quickly as possible.”
That’s not what we did. For more than three years, we stubbornly tried to pass an age measure that almost nobody wanted.
In the end, we achieved neither the age measure, nor the points-based pension, nor the start of a funded pension scheme, nor a retirement age comparable to that of our main neighbors and competitors, nor balanced funding for our pension system, nor any of the other structural reforms in other areas that I mentioned at the time as being particularly urgent. And, in particular, none of the reforms concerning the arduous nature of work and the employment of older people, which explain why so many people want to retire as early as possible.
If we carry on like this, it’s clear that we won’t be able to pay the pensions of future generations, that deficits will continue to grow, and that we’ll scare off investors with excessive taxes.
Everyone is complicit in this fiasco: the executive for being stubborn; the opposition for not proposing alternative solutions other than cancelling the reforms proposed by the government; the unions and employers for backing down, when a compromise was within reach.
More generally, French society is not thinking enough about the major problems it is about to face. Today, it is almost entirely focused on a single objective: getting rid of those who run it. Whatever these leaders say, whatever they propose, whatever they explain, whatever they do, the French don’t want them any more. This obsessive disengagement translates into an implicit program common to all oppositions and, once in power, they will do nothing other than take from the richest, or even the least poor, enough to maintain the social model and institutional system as it is.
Without confronting the obvious: social justice is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a harmonious society. We must also have the means to finance this justice, both for today’s living and for future generations; otherwise, disaster is guaranteed. And that’s what’s in store: taxes that will scare away investors and entrepreneurs; sovereignist and anti-European priorities that will scare away talent.
So there’s no reason to be surprised if, year after year, we see France slipping backwards, according to every possible criterion: social justice, public debt, budget deficit, trade deficit, balance of payments deficit. Nor is there any reason to be surprised if purchasing power has risen less rapidly in France than in Germany, and if poverty has increased faster there than elsewhere. What’s more, there’s no reason to be surprised either if entrepreneurs and capital are leaving, and if all French people are now gripped by an existential anguish in the face of the Himalayan challenges of the future.
At a time when some of our European partners and Asian competitors are daring courageous reforms to make public spending more efficient, to improve school performance, to make agriculture healthier, to improve the healthcare system, to make the army better adapted to the challenges of the day after tomorrow, and to attract entrepreneurs and talent.
Everyone should recognize the obvious: there can be no legitimate elite without equal access to education, health care, cities, credit, cultural life and meaningful work. Nor is there equality without the continuous emergence of an elite that is constantly renewed, demanding, legitimate, ambitious, hard-working, free to make its fortune and concerned with giving the country the means to remain great. Well beyond 2027. At least until 2040.
This is exactly what is missing today from those who govern this country, and from all those who aspire to power: an analysis of the demographic, environmental, financial, educational, social and geopolitical threats facing the country. A lucid vision of the competition for our talents, our companies and our capital. A reflection on how to capitalize on the country’s major assets. A strategy for implementing the major reforms required.
Only then will we stop, in every sense of the word, “retreating”.
Image: The Republic, Plato.