In a parliamentary reply to a question from MP , labour minister provided an overview of the early retirement adjustment scheme. This scheme allows certain employees to leave the world of work before the legal retirement age, within a limited and supervised framework.

In 2024, 161 employees were admitted to this scheme, according to an answer from the labour minister, compared with 162 in 2023 and 196 in 2022. The trend is therefore stable, but slightly down on the post-covid years, particularly 2021, which saw a peak of 514 beneficiaries.

Since 2015, 1,887 claims have been accepted. Currently, 450 employees are still receiving compensation, all of whom left their jobs after March 2022. At the same time, 128 agreements have been signed between the state and employers, in a variety of contexts: 23 as part of redundancy plans, 36 as part of job retention plans.

But what exactly are we talking about? Pre-retirement adjustment is a mechanism that allows older employees to stop working before retirement age while receiving compensation. This system is part of a collective framework, negotiated between the company and the state, generally to avoid compulsory redundancies during restructuring. It is therefore not an individual right, but a targeted social measure.

In budgetary terms, expenditure on all early retirement schemes since 2015 has exceeded €900m. However, it is impossible to know exactly how much of this is attributable to the early retirement adjustment scheme: reimbursements are accounted for globally in the ministry’s IT systems.

A reform of pension schemes  to the chamber by summer 2025, and it is not excluded that it will include a review of the early retirement-adjustment scheme.

This article in French.