2024-01-16 19:33:46
While the welfare state’s accounts are deteriorating, the executive gives the impression of remaining idle. In a note revealed on Tuesday, January 16, during a press conference, the High Council for the Financing of Social Protection sounds the alarm, implicitly inviting public authorities to emerge from their lethargy. The terms used in this diagnosis are sometimes scathing, which is not in the habit of the institution chaired by Dominique Libault: faced with a situation “concerning”she notes, there is no “no strategy” of “return to balance”For now.
The data on which the High Council relies are not new. They had already been communicated, in the fall of 2023, to parliamentarians during the debates on the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2024. After recording an abysmal deficit linked to the health crisis (nearly 40 billion euros in 2020), the basic compulsory schemes have begun to recover, even if the balance remains negative in 2023: − 8.7 billion, including the surplus generated by the solidarity fund which supplements the minimum old age.
But the 2024 financial year marks a « rupture », according to Mr. Libault’s formula. Imbalances are growing again and could reach −17.5 billion in 2027. The most worrying thing is that this trend is emerging without there being any “exogenous shock” – that is to say a recession or an epidemic which would inflate the amount of benefits paid, while undermining contribution revenue.
No trajectory for restoring balance
Two sectors are in difficulty. First of all, there is Health Insurance, whose deficit would remain more or less stable, oscillating between 9 and 10 billion euros from 2024 to 2027. The resources allocated to the healthcare system are proving insufficient to cope. – among other things – to recent increases in agent remuneration and the dynamics of health spending.
The old-age branch, which includes basic pension plans but not supplementary funds (like that of the private Agirc-Arrco), is the other poorly functioning compartment of our welfare state. After getting closer to the waterline in 2023 (at −1.9 billion euros), it sees its finances deteriorating, with a negative balance which could reach −14 billion in 2027.
Important clarification provided by the High Council: the pension reform, promulgated in 2023, allows the old age branch to make savings but does not prevent it from sinking into the red. Within it, there is a fund which is experiencing acute budgetary problems: that of civil servants working in public hospitals and local authorities. His “number of pensioners (…) are progressing strongly while the number of contributors stagnates »underlines the note released Tuesday.
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