Organisation of the system, Édouard Philippe
Funded share: Collective funded pensions for all employees, €500 from the State at first job
Direction of change: creation of a scheme, compared with current law.
The lever. Role given to retirement savings invested on the markets, alongside pay-as-you-go, in which the contributions of those in work pay the pensions. Direction rule: ↑ larger funded share.
« Généraliser à tous les salariés la retraite par capitalisation collective, qui existe déjà pour les fonctionnaires, et ouvrir un plan d'épargne retraite à chaque Français, avec un premier versement de l'État de 500€ dès le premier emploi. »1Translation by the editorsExtend to all employees collective funded pensions, which already exist for civil servants, and open a retirement savings plan for every French person, with a first payment of €500 from the State from the first job.
Words of Édouard Philippe, Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026), 14 October 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.
No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.
Encoding
| Parameter | Current law | Proposed | Effective date or horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public payment into a retirement account at the first job | 0 € par jeune | 500 € par jeune (assumption by the editors, see the costing) | €bn per year, 2025 base: revenue loss for the pay-as-you-go scheme during the transition, pensions unchanged |
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The cited source does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
−€0.4bn
per year for the public accounts, new spending.
The calculation
- Public payment into a retirement account at the first job: (500 − 0) ÷ 1,000 = 0.5 times “€1,000 paid to each young person at their first job (773,000 leavers from initial education per year, Céreq)”, each a cost of €0.77bn (0.77 to 0.77).
Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Reading adopted: €500 paid once by the State to each young person at their first job, the annual flow of first jobs being taken as equal to that of first-time leavers from the education system (773,000 in 2021, Céreq), i.e. about €0.39bn a year. Not costed: the extension of collective funded pensions to all employees, with no rate or funding method (contributions diverted from the pay-as-you-go system or new savings). The payment is counted as spending; an account remaining the property of a public fund could be a financial transaction.
Coefficient calculated by the editors from Céreq Bref n° 487-488, « S'insérer dans un monde instable : le diplôme reste une valeur sûre » (enquête 2024 auprès de la Génération 2021): the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. The mandatory system is pay-as-you-go. The only funded exceptions: the RAFP (civil service, €43.3bn in provisions) and the FRR (€21.2bn in assets at end-2023, which pays €1.45bn per year to the Cades in 2025). Voluntary retirement savings (PER) accounted for €8.3bn in benefits and €18.5bn in contributions in 2022, for outstanding assets of €292.7bn at end-2023. Their tax and social advantages cost about €1.8bn per year.
Horizon. €bn per year, 2025 base: revenue loss for the pay-as-you-go scheme during the transition, pensions unchanged.
Limits. Parameter “payment at the first job” (18 October 2026): arithmetic coefficient, 773,000 young people who left the education system for the first time in 2021 (Céreq, Génération survey) × amount paid, i.e. €0.77bn per year for €1,000; each leaver is assumed to obtain a job one day and to receive the payment once, the annual flow of first jobs then being equal to that of leavers. Leavers in 2017 numbered 746,000 (Céreq). Any switch to funded pensions has a double cost: the diverted contributions no longer finance current pensions, which the State must continue to pay. The range uses the yield of one point of contribution to the general scheme: €4.8bn (employee share, uncapped), €6.2bn (below the ceiling) and €7.6bn (employer share, uncapped), according to the DSS. A public endowment to a sovereign pension fund is costed as a lump sum equal to the amount paid in, hence the value 0 to be filled in according to the programme. Future financial returns are not counted in a static costing. A mere new tax incentive for the PER (retirement savings plan) is costed as a tax expenditure, from the €1.8bn benchmark. A public endowment to a funded pension fund is costed at the amount paid in, which is announced by the candidate; the cost of retirement savings incentives (€1.8bn) is a benchmark. Parameter “endowment at birth”: arithmetic coefficient, number of births in France in 2025 (Insee, 643,905) × amount paid, i.e. €0.64bn per year for €1,000. The number of births has fallen every year since 2010: the cost follows. Newborns of French nationality are slightly fewer than births in France. The payment is counted as spending (a transfer to the child); if it remained the property of a public fund, it could be classified as a financial transaction, which weighs on the debt and not on the deficit. Tax-exempt family top-ups and the fund's future return are not costed.
- Céreq Bref n° 487-488, « S'insérer dans un monde instable : le diplôme reste une valeur sûre » (enquête 2024 auprès de la Génération 2021), 2026-07: « L’enquête 2024 auprès de la Génération 2021 est représentative au niveau national des 773 000 individus ayant quitté pour la première fois le système éducatif en 2021, depuis le niveau collège jusqu’au niveau doctorat. »
- Cour des comptes, Situation financière et perspectives du système de retraites, tableau n° 8 (DSS), 2025-02-20: « Le montant des ressources annuelles supplémentaires pour le système de retraites issues d’une augmentation d’un point du taux de cotisations serait compris entre 4,8 Md€ et 7,6 Md€ selon que la mesure serait appliquée sur la part salariale ou sur la part patronale »
- Cour des comptes, même rapport, épargne retraite, 2025-02-20: « en 2022, ils représentent 8,3 Md€ de prestations pour 18,5 Md€ de cotisations et un encours de 292,7 Md€ fin 2023. Même s’ils sont limités, ces dispositifs sont coûteux pour les finances publiques. […] pour un coût estimé à 1,8 Md€ par an. »
- Cour des comptes, même rapport, RAFP et FRR, 2025-02-20: « Le régime additionnel de la fonction publique, qui repose sur une logique de capitalisation, dispose de 43,3 Md€ de provisions. […] Le placement de ses actifs (21,2 Md€ fin 2023) a permis de financer une contribution annuelle à la Cades […] passée à 1,45 Md€ en 2025. »
- Insee, Les naissances en 2025 et en séries longues (État civil, Insee Résultats), 2026-07-06: « Au total, 643 905 bébés sont nés en France en 2025, contre 645 000 estimés lors du bilan démographique. »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026), 14 October 2026. Words of Édouard Philippe. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (Site de campagne « Avec Édouard 2027 », priorité « Pour une France plus prospère » (page non datée, consultée le 14 octobre 2026)).
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