‘Risky but it’s a necessity’: Macron wants to push back France’s retirement age to 65

Emmanuel Macron’s finance minister has admitted that trying to push back France’s retirement age is a “risk” for the president as he seeks reelection, but one that is necessary to reinforce and protect the French social system.

Macron’s campaign pledges for elections next month features a shakeup of France’s complicated pensions system and the moving of the retirement age to 65 from 62. France currently has one of the earliest retirement ages out of the industrialized nations.

The president made a similar promise before 2017’s election but the final proposals were met with protests before being halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to CNBC’s Charlotte Reed on Thursday evening, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said it was “risky, but it’s a necessity.”

“It is a necessity if you want to improve the global prosperity of the French nation … Because that’s the best way of protecting our social model. That’s the best way of giving the guarantee to all the French citizens that they will have access to a fair and efficient pension system,” he said.

“You know the other possibilities would be to increase taxes on the population. And clearly we don’t want to do increase taxes on the French population. We want to reduce the level of taxation on the French population. The other way would be to reduce the level of pensions. That’s also a solution that we clearly want to avoid. So if you want to avoid those two bad solutions, and if you want to reinforce and protect the French social system you don’t have any other choice than to push back the retirement age.”