In France, any pension reform seems doomed to become a major political and social confrontation. Legal age, hardship, financial balance, justice between generations or between statuses: each subject revives fractures, fuels trials of intent and often ends up preventing a calm debate on the merits. On the other side of the Rhine, Germany is preparing to open a comparable project, but using a method that deserves to be looked at closely.
Germany is also faced with a demographic reality that is difficult to dispute. Its population is aging, and the pay-as-you-go system is under pressure. By 2040, a third of today’s working people are expected to be retired, according to the German Federal Statistical Office. Added to this is an additional signal: for the first time since the Second World War, Germany recorded a decline in its population in 2025, linked in particular to a drop in immigration.
Stabilize the level of pensions
Faced with this observation, a pensions commission presented in June 2026 a set of 33 recommendations intended to sustainably guarantee the viability and social justice of the system. The composition and functioning of this commission are already revealing of the famous German culture of compromise: academics and representatives of the CDU/CSU and SPD government coalition, numerous hearings, 19 working meetings, and at the end of the process, recommendations adopted unanimously.
Of course, France does not intend to copy Germany. Our social histories, our institutional balances and our relationship to work differ. Simply, the German debates pose a useful question: are we still capable of treating pensions as a subject of collective responsibility rather than as a permanent marker of political confrontation?
Several German proposals could, at the very least, usefully nourish our reflection.
The first consists of introducing a compulsory capitalization component, inspired by the Swedish model implemented at the end of the 1990s. The commission proposes an initial contribution of 0.5% of gross salary, gradually increased to 2% by 2031. Financed equally by employees and employers, these savings would be managed by a public fund and invested on the financial markets.
Such a measure would naturally lead to an increase in levies. It would also make it possible to complete the pay-as-you-go system, stabilize – and even increase! – the level of pensions and to better distribute the effort over time.
Elimination of early retirement at age 63
The second proposal touches on the most sensitive subject: the retirement age. Germany already plans a legal retirement age raised to 67 years by 2031. The commission now proposes indexing it to changes in life expectancy. Concretely, this could translate into an extension of working life of around six months per decade. A way of facing a reality that it is becoming urgent to face: when life expectancy increases, the contribution period must change.
Third notable measure: the abolition of early retirement without reduction after 45 years of contributions, known in Germany as “retirement at 63”. This provision was designed for people who started working early, often in difficult jobs.
But it proved costly and also benefited high-income earners, whose professions were not necessarily the most physically demanding. The commission therefore proposes to eliminate it, while providing a specific system for people who can no longer practice their profession for health reasons. Here again, the principle is clear: preserve solidarity, but better target those who really need it.
Expand retirement insurance to all assets
The commission also proposes gradually expanding retirement insurance to all active workers. Self-employed workers, civil servants and MPs would be called upon to join the system. This orientation has a strong political impact. It aims to reinforce the idea of common responsibility and to integrate all professional categories into the pension system.
Finally, the committee proposes to eliminate the exceptional regime for “mini-jobs”, these low-paid part-time jobs not subject to pension contributions. This measure reminds us that a retirement system cannot be sustainable if a growing part of the activity cannot be financed.
The government of Friedrich Merz now wishes to take up these proposals and implement all the reforms by the end of the year. For this, it benefits from the support of the German Federation of Industry, the BDI.
Neither perfect model nor direct solution
The German example obviously does not resolve the French debate. It provides neither a perfect model nor a directly transposable solution. But it has the merit of placing pension reform in a long-term perspective. He reminds us that a retirement system cannot be based sustainably on promises that demographics make increasingly difficult to keep.
The real question, for France, is of course not whether to follow the path opened by Germany. It is to know whether we are capable, in our turn, of organizing a debate on pensions: a debate which accepts demographic constraints, which truly protects the most exposed, which brings the statuses together instead of opposing them, and which seeks less to win a political battle than to preserve the social cohesion of our country.
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