France wants to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030

French workers oppose Emmanuel Macron’s government proposal to raise the retirement age 62 years to 64 years by 2030.

The project was presented by French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on January 10th and approved by the Council of Ministers on Monday (23 January 2023). Here is the full text of the proposal (966 KB, in French).

The French government aims for entry into force in September 2023. The text, which has already been approved by the Council of Ministers, is to be debated in Parliament at the beginning of February.

According to Macron, “The goal [da reforma] is to strengthen our prepaid pension systems, which would otherwise be at risk as we continue to finance with debt.”

Implementation of the new retirement rules will be phased in. It will increase by 1 quarter per year starting September 1, 2023. This means that the legal minimum age should be 63 years and 3 months in 2027 and reach 64 years in 2030.

The contribution period will also be gradually increased by 3 months. The minimum age will be raised from 42 to 43 by 2027.

From 2027 you must have reached the minimum age and have worked until the age of 43 to receive a full pension. Those who retire at age 67 automatically receive a full pension (no discount) even without having worked for 43 years.

French people in a situation of invalidity or incapacity to work can stop working after a maximum of 62 years. Disabled workers can retire at 55.

With regard to long careers, as the paths of people who started their careers at a young age are called, the pension system is being adjusted. The rules depend on the age at which the French citizen entered the labor market:

• before the 16th can leave from the age of 58;
• 16 to 18 years old from 60 years;
• 18 to 20 years old from 62 years.

Some “special regimes” dealing with pension funds different from the general regime will be closed if the proposal is adopted.

The new hires, for example, at the RATP (Autonomous Transport of Paris, in the French acronym), the branch of the electricity and gas industry, at the Bank of France, notaries and members of the Cese (Economic, Social and Environmental Council of France). , acronym in French) are abolished from the special pension system and therefore merge into the general system.

The military is unaffected by the proposal and will retain the right to retire before the general retirement age. The same rules apply to private employees as to public employees.

With the project, the pension for full minimum wage contribution careers cannot be less than 85% of the net minimum wage at €1,200 gross per month (about R$6,600, at the current rate) and the minimum pension will increase by €100 per month for a career of 43 years.

LEGAL REACTIONS

The President of the Republican Party, Erich CiottiThe one on the right had set the conditions for his party’s possible support for the government’s pension proposal: “Reform yes, [mas] We will discuss the pace and timeline of this reform.”

After presenting the project, the party said it was “satisfied to have been consulted by the government”, mainly on the pace of moving the retirement age and resetting small pensions, not only for future retirees but also for current ones . .

The leftwing coalition, made up of the Socialist Party, La France Insoumise (France Insubmissa, in free translation) and the ecologists, called the 1st day of mobilization against the social security reform decreed by the unions. “The reform supported by Macron is a serious social setback,” said La France Insoumise boss JeanLuc Mélenchon.

Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt said Monday (23 January), after approval by Macron’s ministers, that the reform would save 18 billion euros (around 99 billion reals at current exchange rates) by 2030.

The minister also stated that raising the legal age proposed by the reform would amount to “unbalancing the system financially”. According to Dussopt, an index on the employment of seniors is to be created for companies with more than 300 employees.

Deliberations in the National Assembly and Senate are scheduled to begin on February 6 and end on March 26, the deadline for final approval of the reform under the Social Security Financing Amendment Bill (PLFRSS). The information comes from the JDN.

GENERAL STRIKE

On Thursday (19 January) around 1.1 million people took to the streets in France to demonstrate against the government’s pension reform proposal. A new demonstration is planned for January 31st.

Nudes were recorded in at least 9 cities including the capital Paris, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes, ClermontFerrand, Montpellier, Tours, Nice, Lyon. The general strike has closed metro stations and tourist attractions in France.

Emmanuel Macron commented on the demonstrations in conversation with journalists. The French President was in Barcelona, ​​Spain, for a FrancoSpanish summit. He said at the time that it was “good and legitimate that all opinions can be expressed”.

In Paris, a group of protesters threw cans, bottles and sticks at police. Security forces responded with tear gas. At least 44 people have been arrested in the French capital, according to Le Figaro.

According to the CGT, 400,000 demonstrators took part in the crime in Paris. The French government said the act in the French capital was attended by 80,000 people.

This report was prepared in collaboration with journalist intern Maria Eduarda Cardoso, under the supervision of editor Victor Labaki.

(OTTAWA) The federal government has invested billions of dollars to quickly build affordable housing across the country, but construction delays suggest many projects approved for funding are missing deadlines.

Posted at 11:53am

Nojoud Al Mallees The Canadian Press

The Rapid Housing Initiative is a federal program launched in 2020 that funds cities and nonprofits to build affordable housing for vulnerable Canadians, including those affected by homelessness.

The federal government has offered $2.5 billion in the first two rounds of funding for the project, on the condition that approved units are built within 12 months or within 18 months in northern or outlying communities.

However, a document produced by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) in response to a written question from a congressman shows that the majority of the approved units have yet to be built.

The first project bidding cycle ended at the end of March 2021 and resulted in the approval of 4,792 housing projects, while the second cycle, carried out a year later, gave another 5,473 the green light. .

The CMHC document dated November 30 says only 1,449 units were completed.

Neither CMHC nor the office of Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen said how many projects had missed deadlines.

However, a CMHC spokesman acknowledged some had been delayed. “Due to the unprecedented circumstances real estate developers have faced in recent years, including supply chain disruptions, rising costs and severe weather, some projects are expected to take longer, primarily due to infrastructure and construction issues,” said Leonard Catling.

Carolyn Whitzman, a housing policy expert and professor at the University of Ottawa, says the federal government has touted the initiative as a success, with more units than expected being approved for construction. The first two rounds of approvals exceeded the target of 2,600 total units, she noted.

However, the professor believes several obstacles stand in the way of many affordable housing projects, including opposition from local residents and a lack of support from provincial governments.

“To obtain supportive housing through a rapid housing initiative or any other program requires very strong cooperation between all three levels of government,” she said.

She also recalled that housing construction has also been impacted by rising costs and labor shortages.

In November, the federal government announced the initiative’s third round of funding, which will provide an additional $1.5 billion.

The federal government has extended construction time for this round to 18 months for most homes and 24 months for projects in northern or remote communities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has made affordable housing a cornerstone of its agenda to support and empower the middle class. In 2017, he announced his National Housing Strategy, a ten-year plan that invests tens of billions of dollars in affordable housing.

In a report released in November, Auditor General Karen Hogan noted that the government was not tracking its progress on reducing chronic homelessness, despite setting a goal of reducing it by 50% by 2028.

Ms. Hogan’s report found that there are gaps in data collection across the federal government, making it difficult to assess the success of different programs.

CMHC has spent $4.5 billion since 2018 as the leader of the national housing strategy. However, the report revealed that society does not know who is benefiting.

Whitzman argued that failure to track the success of her projects can lead to public distrust and skepticism about whether issues like access to housing can be addressed by the federal government.

“When you invest billions of dollars in a program, you need to measure its effectiveness,” she said.

Dozens of trucks and trains travel across Ukraine every night on a special mission. The country is under martial law and a night curfew, but military convoys and army vehicles are not resting. When the sun goes down, it’s time to introduce and distribute the weapons that will enable Russia to hold its own against Russia, the weapons that will come from NATO allies. The intruder’s air forces have yet to deal a blow to this supply chain, which is being protected as the top secret of the Ukrainian resistance.

One easy way to end up in prison in Ukraine is to spread information about the supply routes for weapons arriving from abroad. “Don’t expect anyone to give you details, it’s an extremely sensitive matter and will be punished by law,” says Olha Husieva, an analyst at the Institute for Security at the University of Kiel (Germany). It is only confirmed that most of the guns, armored vehicles, anti-aircraft systems, rocket launchers, ammunition and basic equipment for Ukrainian troops cross the Polish border.

“When Russia started invading in February, they believed they would take control of Ukraine in a matter of days or weeks; They couldn’t even imagine that a year later thousands of vehicles, thousands of shells, millions of bullets would be arriving from Europe.” Luke Coffey, a retired US military officer, expert at the Hudson Institute and former adviser to the British Defense Secretariat, sums it up like this : “If they had known, they would have avoided concentrating on taking Kyiv and would have attacked western Ukraine from Belarus, but now it’s too late”.

More information

Rzeszow Airport in Poland is perhaps the best protected in Europe today. Several US Patriot air defense batteries are stationed at the airfield and in its region, 70 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. In Rzeszów, which was a NATO outpost in Eastern Europe even before the war, planes carrying military equipment for Ukraine land every day. The Atlantic Alliance has prepared for 2022 visits to its facilities in Rzeszow for defense analysts from its member states. One of those experts, a French academic who was at the airport last summer, told EL PAÍS on condition of anonymity that the level of organization at the site is unprecedented in recent history: there are officers from every NATO country who have weapons storage by type and are quickly loaded at the border.

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Like Berlin in the Cold War

“What’s happening in Rzeszow is reminiscent of the Berlin Airlift,” says French General Jérôme Pellistrandi, referring to the flight connection set up by the United States, the United Kingdom and France to help West Berlin in the face of the blockade. the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. “It’s a very complex task in coordination with NATO, especially the last 500 kilometers forward,” says Pellistrandi. “NATO was unprepared for a conventional war of this magnitude,” adds Husieva, “so the military industry has lagged behind the needs on the front lines. Fortunately, Ukrainian infrastructures were designed and prepared during the Cold War.”

Arms don’t just arrive by air or road, rail links are just as important, both for equipment from the rest of Europe and for the cargo that the US military unloads at German ports. The Ukrainian train network is highly decentralized and it is possible to change routes slightly, an essential safety measure. That keeps Russia from destroying the stretch of track because not only can it be repaired in a short amount of time, but a route change is possible, according to Coffey.

Ukraine shares a 530-kilometer border with Poland, the only country through which arms are officially transferred, although experts polled believe there are other routes through Romania and Slovakia. The Romanian government has not confirmed this, but Moscow has already warned that it has information that this is the case and that it considers this a hostile act. Romania shares a 600km border with Ukraine, but geographically requires a much longer journey than Poland. The same applies to Slovakia. The quickest way to import arms through Romania would be to go through Hungary first, but Viktor Orbán’s government has banned the passage of this military aid through its territory.

There is no information about where the transhipment of cargo takes place, whether Ukrainian trains and trucks are already leaving Poland, or whether the vehicle change takes place at the border. The only thing that is certain is that NATO personnel will not transport it to Ukraine. The long Polish border makes it possible to regularly change the routes to be followed, as Husieva summarizes: In general, the busiest routes are avoided to prevent witnesses and information from reaching the enemy. The convoys are always in small groups and the most valuable weapons come into the country disassembled and in different vehicles, in order not to lose all the equipment in case of an attack.

But the transportation of military equipment is not only carried out by army personnel. A legion of civilian volunteers load equipment from the borders in their private vehicles every day that aren’t strictly weapons, such as bulletproof vests, helmets, night vision goggles, or reconnaissance drones. Husieva assures that trucks carrying ammunition and weapons must wear some military insignia, but EL PAÍS was able to show that this is not always the case.

Russian impotence

Russia’s state agency TASS released a note last December in which senior government officials from Ukraine’s annexed Lugansk province called on Moscow to destroy logistics routes in western Ukraine because doing so alone would have “radical implications” for the invasion. The point, according to Pellistrandi, is that Moscow has given up on it because it doesn’t have the capacity to achieve it. The best way would be if the Russian Air Force could advance into Ukrainian territory, but since April 2022 it has abandoned this because of the huge effectiveness of Kyiv’s mobile air defense network. The alternative that remains for the Russian army are precision missiles, but their arsenal is minimal after 11 months of war, according to American and British intelligence.

Pellistrandi estimates that Russia still has 30% of cruise missiles. The analysts polled agree that militarily it makes no sense to take out a truck or two with a missile that can cost a million euros, with the added difficulty of moving targets. “Without the ability to deploy their planes, the Russians have poor technology to hit moving targets,” says Coffey, “Lancet drones would be their best option, but their missiles are short-range and would need to go too far in the Ukrainian ones.” penetrate airspace. Husieva also points out that the very vertical hierarchy of the Russian army means that orders take too long for attacks, which in the case of mobile targets require very quick decisions.

The danger for Ukraine lies in the last few kilometers before reaching the front lines, as demonstrated last August in Chaplino, a railroad community in Dnepropetrovsk province, a logistical distribution point for troop trains and heavy weapons bound for Donetsk in the east. Russia has hit a military convoy with soldiers and military equipment with Iskander precision missiles. According to testimonies collected by this newspaper from residents of the city, the reason is that the train was stopped at Chaplino station for more than a day.

Another disadvantage of Moscow is that its network of spy satellites, which can monitor weapons entering Ukraine, is smaller than NATO’s, according to Coffey. “Russia has to control a huge territory, not only all of Ukraine, but also its own borders and even Syria.” The weather conditions don’t help either, says Pellistrandi, because the clouds, which are practically daily in the region, limit the satellite images. The Kremlin’s only alternative to seriously disrupting foreign aid would be to bomb Rzeszow airport, this French general concludes, but that’s unlikely because it would almost mean declaring World War III.

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