The State, which manages our pension system, spends nearly 6 billion euros a year on the special schemes on which certain assets depend, and which offer more favorable conditions to their affiliates in terms of retirement in particular, compared to those applied to assets covered by the general social security system. These subsidies, intended in particular to finance and make up for the deficits of special pension schemes which are not self-financing, mainly concern the special pension schemes of EDF, Engie, SNCF and RATP.
In France, there are three major social security systems whose mission is to protect individuals from the consequences of various events or situations in terms of illness, family, accidents at work, occupational diseases, and old age (retirement and widowhood). First, the general scheme, which concerns about 80% of workers, mainly salaried workers in the private sector. Then, the agricultural system on which agricultural employees and farmers depend. And, finally, the scheme for self-employed and non-agricultural workers.
These are all the compulsory basic or supplementary pension schemes which operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, i.e. these schemes redistribute over the course of a year, in the form of pensions paid to retirees, the contributions collected the same year from active persons.
In addition to these 3 main social security schemes, there is another major pillar, that of the special schemes. These special schemes, created long before Social Security as we understand it today, which dates from 1946, concern very specific professions or companies. They apply rules, particularly in terms of retirement, which differ from those of other major social security schemes.
These special regimes can be classified into 3 main categories:the state civil service regime (civil and military civil servants), territorial and hospital; the regime for public enterprises and establishments; and about twenty schemes which group together certain professions (scheme for clerks and employees of notaries, scheme for minors, scheme for worship, etc.), or certain companies (scheme for staff of the Paris Opera and the Comédie Française, the RATP, the SNCF, the Banque de France, the electricity and gas industries, etc.).
Special pension schemes operate differently from other social security schemes, particularly with regard to the pensions of their affiliates, in terms of retirement age or calculation of their pensions, for example. The conditions applied are in any case always more favorable to those concerning retirees from other schemes.
Today, the special schemes manage a fairly minimum number of retirements, compared to the general pension scheme which concerns more than 13 million retirees when certain special schemes do not administer more than a million retirees, or even much less for some of them.
Despite everything, these special schemes benefit from national solidarity, for example from state subsidies, particularly in terms of managing their pensioners and making up for their deficits, while the accounts of our general pension system are in the red ( a hole of 18 billion euros). This is one of the reasons why the government wishes, in its pension reform, to move towards the abolition of these special schemes.
Thus, to fill the deficits and finance the special pension schemes, the State pays a total of nearly 6 billion euros per year, for example, to all the special schemes of EDF, Engie, SNCF or RATP, the main ones for which the State intervenes massively, with the consequence that less funds are available for the general pension system, the scheme which covers most French pensioners.
The State is required to pay subsidies to these special schemes because the employee and employer contributions of their affiliates do not on their own make it possible to finance these specific schemes, because the number of their contributors is not sufficient to pay their retirees, an even more marked imbalance than in the general pension scheme. Illustration:employee contributions cover only 68% of the pensions of retirees from the electricity and gas industries (IEG), 41% at the RATP and 36% at the SNCF.
With regard to IEGs, the public funding granted takes the form of a transmission tariff contribution (CTA), i.e. nearly 2 billion euros per year, a tax paid by each consumer of electricity and/or gas except for IEG staff and retirees. The SCNCF and the RATP receive to finance their special pension schemes what are known as annual State allocations, of just over 3 billion euros for the SNCF and nearly 700 million euros for the RATP.
In the end, as reported by online media The Conversation , the State finances "28% of pensions in the case of IEGs, 62% at the SNCF and 59% at the RATP".
