The High Council for the Financing of Social Protection sounds the alarm on social debt | EUROtoday

While the welfare state’s accounts are deteriorating, the manager gives the look of remaining idle. In a observe revealed on Tuesday, January 16, throughout a press convention, the High Council for the Financing of Social Protection sounds the alarm, implicitly inviting public authorities to emerge from their lethargy. The phrases used on this prognosis are typically scathing, which isn’t within the behavior of the establishment chaired by Dominique Libault: confronted with a state of affairs “concerning”she notes, there isn’t any “no strategy” of “return to balance”For now.

The knowledge on which the High Council depends should not new. They had already been communicated, within the fall of 2023, to parliamentarians in the course of the debates on the Social Security financing invoice (PLFSS) for 2024. After recording an abysmal deficit linked to the well being disaster (almost 40 billion euros in 2020), the essential obligatory schemes have began to get well, even when the stability stays destructive in 2023: − 8.7 billion, together with the excess generated by the solidarity fund which dietary supplements the minimal previous age.

But the 2024 monetary 12 months marks a “breakup”, based on Mr. Libault’s components. Imbalances are rising once more and will attain −17.5 billion in 2027. The most worrying factor is that this development is rising with out there being any “exogenous shock” – that’s to say a recession or an epidemic which might inflate the quantity of advantages paid, whereas undermining contribution income.

No trajectory for restoring stability

Two sectors are in issue. First of all, there may be Health Insurance, whose deficit would stay kind of steady, oscillating between 9 and 10 billion euros from 2024 to 2027. The assets allotted to the healthcare system are proving inadequate to manage. – amongst different issues – to current will increase in agent remuneration and the dynamics of well being spending.

The old-age department, which incorporates primary pension plans however not supplementary funds (like that of the personal Agirc-Arrco), is the opposite poorly functioning compartment of our welfare state. After getting nearer to the waterline in 2023 (at −1.9 billion euros), it sees its funds deteriorating, with a destructive stability which may attain −14 billion in 2027.

Important clarification offered by the High Council: the pension reform, promulgated in 2023, permits the previous age department to make financial savings however doesn’t stop it from sinking into the pink. Within it, there’s a fund which is experiencing acute budgetary issues: that of civil servants working in public hospitals and native authorities. His “variety of pensioners (…) are progressing strongly whereas the variety of contributors stagnates »underlines the observe launched Tuesday.

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