THE COUNCIL OF STATE SUMS THE GOVERNMENT

TO REVIEW THE COPY ON PENSION REFORM

This Friday, January 7, 2020, the State Council strongly criticized the method with which the government conducted its pension reform project, presented the same morning in the Council of Ministers. This suggests harsh and long future debates.

Seized on January 3, 2020, the institution had only three weeks to render its conclusions on the two bills (organic and ordinary).

A time deemed far too short, especially since the government has also modified the text six times during this period.

The Council of State underlines that “having regard to the date and the conditions of its referral, as well as to the numerous modifications made to the texts while it was examining them, the will of the government to have its opinion within a period of three weeks did not put him in a position to carry out his mission with the serenity and the time required for reflection to best guarantee the legal certainty of the examination he carried out ”, declared the court in its opinion.

"A situation all the more regrettable" since it is a reform "unprecedented since 1945 and intended to transform for decades to come [...] one of the major components of the social contract", adds the highest administrative jurisdiction of the country.

“Gap” financial projections

In addition to the two laws, a financial impact study of this reform was also sent to it. And this study has not, as it stands, satisfied lawyers. The first version was "insufficient", and even once the text was completed, "the financial projections remain incomplete", in particular on the increase in the retirement age, the employment rate of seniors, spending on unemployment insurance and those related to social minima, they argue.

In some cases, the impact study "remains below what it should be, so it is up to the government to improve it even before the bill is tabled in Parliament," notes the Conseil d 'State.

Using too many prescriptions

The institution also points out the choice to use 29 prescriptions, including "for the definition of structuring elements of the new pension system", which "makes lose the overall visibility which is necessary for the appreciation of the consequences of reform and, therefore, its constitutionality and its conventionality ”.

This criticism echoes the explosion in the number of prescriptions, which were once exceptional. "The novelty with the Philippe government is the use of ordinances for very political reforms such as labor law and railway reform, the legal site Dalloz-actualité already noted in March 2018.

The purpose of the ordinances is not so much to allow a faster implementation, as to avoid a stagnation of the parliamentary debates: the enabling laws can be adopted without waiting for the finalization of a precise text. " method of which the Council of State today points the limit.

As an example of the consequences of the reform: that relating to the “100% conservation of the rights created” at the time of the switch between the current system and the future “universal system” is considered “particularly crucial”, to such an extent “that in the absence of such an order "the reform" will not apply "to persons born from 1975.

Commitments to teachers "contrary to the Constitution"

The Council of State also considers that the commitment made by the government to increase the salaries of teachers and researchers via programming laws is doomed to disappear from the text. "These provisions constitute an injunction to the government to table a bill and its thus contrary to the Constitution", estimated the institution.

The false promise of a "universal pension plan"

The Council of State also notes that the reform project does not establish "a universal system which would be characterized, like any social security system, by a set consisting of a single eligible population, uniform rules and a fund unique ”. And for good reason, the text creates "five regimes", with "within each of these regimes" "rules derogating from those of the universal system".

This opinion comes at a time when the protest against the pension reform had a new day of mobilization throughout France, with a slight revival of mobilization. . “In form and content, the Council of State fully confirms what we have been saying from the start. There is a real problem with the legal consistency of the text, ”reacted François Hommeril, president of CFE-CGC, on Saturday.

The unions also called for continuing the movement next week.

An opinion which will be useful for those who say that the government improvises, or in any case that it has not gone far enough in the reflection and the development of a text, not consensual, but of a text coherent !!!!