\n France\u2019s government on Thursday moved to delay the application of a controversial 2023 pensions reform, but sparked criticism for seeking to pay for it with increased health insurance taxes and frozen pensions.\n <\/p>\n
The measure comes with France mired in political deadlock since President Emmanuel Macron last year called for snap parliamentary polls, which saw his centrist bloc lose its majority.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu earlier this month promised to postpone the unpopular pensions reform, which includes raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64, in a bid to survive a confidence vote in the legislative chamber.<\/p>\n
The Socialists, a key swing group in the hung parliament, had demanded the reform be cancelled.<\/p>\n
Lecornu made the concession following an intense week of politics that saw him resign then be reappointed, after the lower house toppled his two predecessors in a standoff over cost-cutting measures.<\/p>\n
Lecornu\u2019s cabinet on Thursday in a so-called \u201ccorrective letter\u201d postponed the new retirement age of 64 and revised pension plan contributions until January 2028, after the end of Macron’s second term in office.<\/p>\n
The measure is part of an austerity budget bill for next year that still has to be debated in parliament.<\/p>\n
But the government said postponing the reform would cost \u20ac100 million in 2026 and \u20ac1.4 billion in 2027.<\/p>\n
To cover those costs, it planned to increase taxes from private health insurance companies, and said pensions for that period would not rise according to the cost of living.<\/p>\n
In France, those who can afford it take out private health insurance on top of public health insurance to cover any difference in medical costs.<\/p>\n
Labour unions were incensed, saying retirees would lose purchasing power.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRetirees of more modest means cannot bear such a measure,\u201d said Yvan Ricordeau of the CFDT union.<\/p>\n
Critics also said ordinary people would likely have to pay higher private health insurance fees to cover the tax hike.<\/p>\n
Denis Gravouil, of the CGT union, said that this too \u201cwould have repercussions on employees and even more on retirees\u201d, for whom health insurance was already more expensive.<\/p>\n
A previous government in 2023 rammed the pensions reform through parliament without a vote, using a controversial constitutional power to do so, sparking months of protests.<\/p>\n
Lecornu has promised not to use that power to force through any draft law, and put all bills to a proper debate between lawmakers before a vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u2019s government on Thursday moved to delay the application of a controversial 2023 pensions reform, but sparked criticism…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[79,18,19,17,234,235],"class_list":{"0":"post-142486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115428612050134458","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}