The Reform of Social Protection in France: Making the Necessary Possible

A “roadmap” preparatory to a new reform of pensions was accepted by the French government at the end of the social conference of July 2012. After a first diagnostic phase, which ended in January 2013 with the publication of the 11^th and 12^th reports of the Advisory Board on Pensions, there should now follow a phase 2, conducted by a Committee of Experts tasked with identifying pathways, and a phase 3 which should be the phase of negotiations between the government and the social partners, with the intention of the government announcing a reform before the end of 2013. Unfortunately, as Jean-Claude Angoulvant points out here, there is no guarantee that this will enable a solution to be found to the country’s difficulties when it comes to the funding of pensions. Above and beyond the recurrent doubts surrounding the pensions system, there is a much wider question here. The French system of social protection has been in deficit for 30 years now. At issue, then, is the appropriateness of the modes of organization of the overall system of social protection, which is in permanent open crisis, and its main components which are pensions and health. The system “is heading for disaster, financially and structurally,” as this article shows, with a potentially serious impact on intergenerational relations. Referring especially to pensions and health, Jean-Claude Angoulvant stresses three structural problems which have to be overcome: the fragmentation of the system, the poor governance by which it is beset and its ill-adaptedness to the new needs of individuals. To safeguard the essential achievements of the French system of social protection and overcome these problems, while ensuring the system’s continued existence, a global and structural –systemic– reform is necessary. This article suggests various paths to achieving this (with the further aim of ending a certain number of injustices where women and workers in insecure employment, among others, are concerned): the unification of the basic pensions regime, defined contributions for the supplementary pensions schemes, an overhaul of family entitlements etc. But time is short and the politicians concerned are not necessarily working to the same timescales.