At the time we were writing the Thematic Paper entitled “French Pension Reform: A Trojan Horse for Better Control of the State Budget?”1, the financial sustainability of the French pension system looked certain. Since then, the government has set a new savings goal, with the aim of achieving financial equilibrium by 2025, and in doing so has prematurely ejected from its Trojan horse… This adds a whole new challenge to an already high-risk reform.

For the most part, not only are the obstacles listed in our previous Thematic Paper still blocking the way, but also governance of the pension system has been called into question, in direct relation with the stakes and challenges to financial equilibrium in the public and private sector already discussed.

First, we would reiterate that the primary goal of the Jean-Paul Delevoye Report was to converge the 42 current pension schemes into a single universal pension system, where one euro saved towards retirement has the same value for everyone, thus making it easier for workers to transfer from one sector to another.