Of the Government project is to break this vicious circle

Putting an end to retire at age 60, Nicolas Sarkozy and his Government draw a line under the social reform the most popular and most emblematic of the era mitterrandist. A reform imposed by the dogmatistes of the "common program", that the Manager left had tried by all means to amend by offering at the time, instead of playing on the cursor of the legal age, to allow employees who have contributed forty years earlier to a pension at full rate. It was the position advocated by the CFDT of Edmond Mayor, which makes for less intriguing the determined opposition of the of CFDT François Chérèque project presented yesterday by Eric Woerth.

But it would significantly reduce the courageous act of power in place of only see that out of the top of the mitterrandisme. With the lengthening of the threshold of 60 years, the France will finally turn the page of an economic aberration, which was already almost thirty years. Lowering the age of retirement in 1982, it was going against the sense of history. As surely as the conducted attempt at approximately the same time, plume wind of globalization, to boost employment in coal in the process of dying. In view of the lengthening of the duration of life, accumulated in the aging of the baby boomeurs, the cost to the country of this thumbing its nose at all the reports of experts is huge. The only part of old age in GDP expenditure grew by 5 between 1981 and today. While Europe échinée without it, to each of its members dedicated 3 points of GDP to research and development-l of the famous Lisbon agenda 2010 target. If we are now well placed to figure of champions of the world of social protection expenditure, only large countries where they have not ceased to increase since 2000, first to the abyss of pensions that it must.

Announcements of yesterday have however another dimension, which goes far beyond the issue of national accounts and look worn on them by the markets. This time, more than all the other reforms of sarkozysme, this is a change in society that will be initiated by the future retirement Act. Because, notwithstanding the alterations made to the 35-hour, this is the first true shot to stop what he should call the French preference for inactivity. Because of the lowering of the statutory retirement age, in a period of mass unemployment, the welfare State has gradually turned into machine to subsidize the non-travail. The employment rate of people aged 60 to 64 is two to four times lower here than in other industrialized nations, it is also very less than those of our direct competitors for the 50-55 age bracket. French family with four generations, the standard is more that one is at work. Of the Government project is to break this vicious circle. Despite the precautions taken, this could not go through a shock effect.

Be admitted by a country aging be put an end to a system that reserves the fruits of growth to more than 45 years is a formidable task. The device as it occurs in the documents published yesterday, for this reason, felt violently by numerous employees. Age, period of assessment, additional levies on the affluent households and businesses: all parameters are operated. All measures will be applied in seven years, a remarkably short period of time for this type of reform.

Crowned by the report from 65 to 67 years of age to which any French, regardless of his professional career, may claim a full pension, the effort has nothing to envy what was earlier asked, but over a longer period, to the Germans. For officials, used for a long time to preferential in these matters, the mere fact of having to undergo the same batch of sacrifices than other risk to degenerate the shock trauma. The trade unions, who recruit most of their supporters in this population, should not be too difficult to mobilize this fall.

To this danger, the President wanted to be flawless in the field of the fairness. Damage that, on such a subject, there, with his advisers, assigned to the old reflex of the reasoning redistributive French, punctures on the "high income", without taking more shots into account intergenerational inequality, that 60 years Act contributed to dig. In other words, it would not have been irrelevant to seek part of current pensioners, insofar as their average, historically favourable situation is related to the impossibility to many young people to improve their. The art of politics, it is true, as is whether choosing between truths for hard to hear.