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Pension amounts, Fabien Roussel

Pension indexation: Pensions indexed to inflation (against the 2027 budget freeze)

Direction of change: unchanged, compared with current law.

The lever. Annual uprating of pensions: in line with inflation, with wages, freeze or under-indexation, depending on the amount of the pension. Direction rule: ↑ uprating more favourable than inflation.

« Encore une fois les retraités sont honteusement ciblés, menacés par le gel des pensions […] Augmenter les salaires et les pensions : porter le smic à 2200 euros bruts, indexer les salaires et les pensions sur l’inflation »1

Translation by the editorsOnce again retirees are shamefully targeted, threatened by the pension freeze […] Increase wages and pensions: raise the SMIC to 2,200 euros gross, index wages and pensions to inflation

PCF, « Budget 2027 : Lecornu annonce une saignée sociale au service du capital » (communiqué), 18 September 2026. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential 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

The position maintains current law: no parameter changes.

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

€0bn

per year for the public accounts, zero cost.

The calculation

  • Status quo: The position maintains current law: zero cost compared with current policies.

Assumption by the editors. Basic pensions are already uprated each year in line with inflation (Social Security Code, Art. L. 161-25): the position amounts to maintaining this rule against the freeze envisaged for 2027.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Basic pensions are uprated on 1 January each year in line with observed inflation (annual average of prices excluding tobacco, Art. L. 161-25 CSS (Social Security Code)), and cannot fall in nominal terms. Uprating of +0.9% on 1 January 2026: the freeze planned in the PLFSS 2026 was not adopted; +1.7% forecast for 1 January 2027 (Commission des comptes de la Sécurité sociale (Social Security Accounts Committee), October 2026). Statutory benefits of the basic schemes: €297.9bn in 2025 (288.0 in 2024). Supplementary pensions (Agirc-Arrco) are managed by the social partners, with a sustainability coefficient of 0.4 points below inflation in the 2023-2027 agreement. The PLF and PLFSS 2027 under discussion (October 2026) mention €6bn of savings on basic pensions: this is not yet current law.

Horizon. Full year 2032, €bn per year in 2025 euros, compared with the current rule (uprating in line with inflation). Assumption common to all indexation rules (pensions, public sector pay index point, grants; decision of 18 October 2026): inflation of 1.75% per year (1.5 to 2.0%), uprating of 1.7% on 1 January 2027, first effect of a measure of the five-year term on 1 January 2028; the 2032 cost accumulates the five upratings from 2028 to 2032.

Limits. (1) Coefficient per point (calculation by the editors). Upper bound, gross: 1% of the statutory benefits of the basic schemes in 2025, €297.9bn (Commission des comptes de la Sécurité sociale, October 2026), i.e. €2.98bn; the €288bn « prévus pour 2025 » [“forecast for 2025”] by the Cour des comptes (Court of Audit) (€2.9bn per point) correspond to the actual level of 2024. Central value, net: the same total × the IPP's net/gross ratio for a freeze (5.2 / 6.6 = 0.79, once income tax, CSG and means-tested benefits are deducted), i.e. €2.35bn. Lower bound: the IPP freeze related to one point on its own scope, existing retirees only (5.2 / 2.5 = €2.08bn net). Under-indexation reads as a saving, with the same unit value. (2) Freeze recalculated. The IPP costs the 2027 freeze with 2.5% inflation (€6.6bn gross, 5.2 net); with the 1.7% uprating forecast for 2027 (CCSS, October 2026), the same freeze would be worth €4.5bn gross and 3.5 net (proportional calculation), and about €4.1bn net for a one-year freeze at 1.75% inflation, the common assumption. The options “full freeze in 2027” (€5.2bn) and “freeze above €2,000” (€2.8bn), costed at 2.5% inflation for a single year, were replaced on 18 October 2026 by parameters in cumulative points: a freeze of all pensions is costed on the general parameter (−1.75 points per year of freeze), a freeze above a threshold on the threshold parameter (−1.75 points per year of freeze). (3) Thresholds (IPP, note no. 129): restricting the freeze to pensions above the median reduces the net saving from €5.2bn to €3.7bn, at €2,000 to €2.8bn, at €3,000 to €1.2bn; hence, per point of inflation, €1.48bn (median) and €1.12bn (€2,000) on the IPP's scope (lower bounds), scaled to the 2025 total like the general parameter (central values), gross as upper bound (same ratio 6.6 / 5.2, which slightly underestimates the gross figure for high pensions, which are more heavily taxed). (4) Cumulation. A rule maintained from 2028 to 2032 is costed by the sum of the annual gaps, in points, applied to the 2025 total: compound interest (less than 0.1 point over five years) and the turnover of retirees are disregarded (pensions awarded after 2028 undergo only part of the gaps, which slightly overstates the amount; the lower bound, on the scope of existing retirees only, partly corrects this). The €2,000 threshold is assumed fixed in euros. (5) Indexation on wages: the annual gap used is that of real earned income in the reference scenario of the COR (pensions advisory council), 0.7 point per year until 2038 (annual report of June 2026), i.e. 3.5 cumulative points in 2032 and about €8.2bn net (7.3 to 10.4). The Institut Montaigne (2024 legislative elections) used 1.1 points (2001-2023 average): €3.4bn gross per uprating, 2.5 net, same order of magnitude per point. The option “indexation on wages” (a single uprating at 1.1 points) was withdrawn on 18 October 2026 in favour of the parameter. (6) Supplementary pensions (€401bn of basic and supplementary benefits in 2025) are not set by law. (7) Option “sustainability” (Cour des comptes): costed by the Cour des comptes as a 2026-2029 average on its own inflation trajectory, not recalculated.

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.

This lever in the method · Costing for Fabien Roussel

  1. PCF, « Budget 2027 : Lecornu annonce une saignée sociale au service du capital » (communiqué), 18 September 2026. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential programme. Read the source (PCF, « Budget 2027 : Lecornu annonce une saignée sociale au service du capital » (communiqué)).

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