Adopted unanimously at first reading, this text by Les Républicains deputy Julien Dive plans to calculate, from 2026, the basic pension on “only the best twenty-five years” of income for farm managers and not more on the whole career.
The National Assembly voted this Thursday, December 1 unanimously a bill LR allowing a more favorable method of calculation of the retirement of self-employed farmers, from 2026.
The deputies Les Républicains defended this Thursday morning this bill aimed at raising the pensions of farmers, a consensual subject in an overheated National Assembly. It plans “to extend to non-salaried agricultural workers”, in particular farm managers, “the calculation of the basic pension on the only twenty-five best years of income”.
“580 euros gross is the pension gap observed each month between a retired farmer and a retired employee”, underlined the rapporteur of the text, the LR deputy from Aisne Julien Dive, at the opening of the debates. It is a “terrible admission of failure of our old-age insurance system” for a profession with “restrictive working conditions” with “two thirds of farmers who do not go on vacation for more than three consecutive days a year”.
“Very ambitious”
The text had initially been rejected in committee, but by very little, which left Republicans with good hope of seeing it adopted in session. Especially since Julien Dive has introduced an amendment to move back to January 2026, and no longer 2024, the gradual entry into force of this measure in order to “give the Mutualité sociale agricole time” to adapt to the new mode of calculation. This progressiveness might lead to full application of the new calculation in 2030.
Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt said he was in favor of the bill thus amended, “a republican compromise”. The “deadline” of application may seem “far away but in reality remains very ambitious”, due to the specificity of agricultural pensions and its many parameters, he explained.
“We will raise our fist”
The government recalled the successive reforms carried out on the subject by elected officials from different sides. Promulgated in July 2020, the “Chassaigne law”, named following the deputy and leader of the communist group André Chassaigne, had raised the pensions of former farm managers to a floor level of 85% of the net minimum wage. A second text presented by this same deputy had made it possible to raise the small pensions of the collaborating spouses of farmers in 2021.
In the hemicycle, André Chassaigne supported Julien Dive’s text: “We will raise our hands or even our fists to vote for it”, he said, following joking regarding the “beauty” of “the UFO of a legislative nature” of the initial version of LR, a “GMO”. The subject is crucial for the attractiveness of the profession, insisted Julien Dive and the FNSEA supports this measure, on behalf of farmers “tired of being treated like second-class assets”.
The adoption of the text in the morning was not done in suspense, especially since the macronists, who advocate consultation and an outstretched hand, might hardly reject all the texts of a potential ally. The majority “goes towards those who present constructive texts and on which we can associate”, had insisted the Minister in charge of relations with Parliament Franck Riester on the subject.
