The legal status of France's state-owned electricity and gas companies, EDF and GDF, was amended in August 2004, allowing some of their capital to be floated on the stock market. Their special pension schemes are to be incorporated into the general system, and in October an agreement was reached on the transfer of the EDF scheme.
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The legal status of France's state-owned electricity and gas companies, EDF and GDF, was amended in August 2004, allowing some of their capital to be floated on the stock market. Their special pension schemes are to be incorporated into the general system, and in October an agreement was reached on the transfer of the EDF scheme.
A law passed on 9 August 2004 changed the status of Electricité de France (EDF) and Gaz de France (GDF) from a 'public industrial and commercial body' (établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial, EPIC) into limited companies, enabling some of the capital of these state-owned utility companies to be floated on the stock market (FR0406104F). The legislation provided for negotiations over the special retirement schemes run by these companies and their financial incorporation into the general public pension scheme. The National Old Age Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale d’assurance vieillesse, CNAV) was to negotiate the financial conditions for this transfer to the general system of the electricity and gas industries (Industries électriques et gazières, IEG) scheme, whose membership extends to some 150,000 active employees and an equivalent number of pensioners.
These discussions, begun in early 2003 (FR0210105F), have taken place in an unusual context. After the change in the two companies’ legal status, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin stated on 23 September 2004 that it was necessary to float EDF on the stock market as early as 2005. This led to a stand-off with the trade unions. At the same time, the new EDF president, Pierre Gadonneix (the former president of GDF), appointed by the government in September 2004, requested a review of a company’s industrial and financial situation. The Ministry for the Economy, Finance and Industry (MINEFI) established a commission, chaired by the former president of a state-owned company, to discuss EDF’s industrial and financial plans, as the amount of the group’s consolidated debt is said to be some EUR 40 billion .
In the negotiations over the pension scheme transfer, CNAV came into conflict with MINEFI over the size of the compensatory settlement that the former should be paid to it in order to guarantee that the private sector employees it currently covers would not lose out as a result of the EDF scheme being incorporated into the general one. For the government the additional question of the opportunity to bring the public budget deficit down below the threshold of 3% of GDP in 2005 was also a factor, as payment of the compensatory settlement would enable social security deficits to be reduced. The electricity and gas industry trade unions (FR0401101N) took every opportunity to set out their positions on the issue of the future of their pension scheme. The trade union confederations represented on the CNAV board contributed to the debate and on 30 September 2004, unanimously passed a motion calling for the legislative guarantees provided for in August 2004 to figure in the final agreement. They fiercely criticised any attempt to make the issue adversarial, with public sector employees on one side and private sector employees on the other. The final decision tilted towards the proposals made by CNAV. Its chair, Danièle Karniewicz, a representative of the French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff-General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l'encadrement-Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC), expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
An agreement was thus signed on 19 October 2004, and will be endorsed by forthcoming legislation. It is based on the CNAV proposals and covers two main points:
the financial compensation involved in this transfer is set at EUR 9 billion;
of this amount, EUR 1.3 billion of will be paid out of the Old Age Solidarity Fund (Fonds de solidarité vieillesse, FSV) in compensation for increases in pension benefit for people who have raised children. The rest of the money will come from the IEG, 40% of which will be paid as early as 2005 and placed in the Pension Reserve Fund (Fonds de réserve des retraites, FRR) and kept there until 2020. The payment of the remaining 60% will be spread over 20 years (as opposed to 25 in the MINEFI’s original plan). This compensatory settlement should be funded in the main by a new tax levied on the supply of electricity and gas, created as part of the change in status of GDF and EDF.
Another agreement with the National Electricity and Gas Industries Fund (Caisse nationale des industries électriques et gazières, CNIEG) is set to establish the conditions for the transfer of the IEG supplementary pension scheme into the general supplementary system -ie the General Association of Managerial Staff Pension Institutions (Association générale des institutions de retraite des cadres, AGIRC) and the Association of Salaried Employees’ Supplementary Pension Schemes (Association des régimes de retraite complémentaire de salariés, ARRCO). The financial compensation will amount to around EUR 9 billion .
Eurofound priporoča, da to publikacijo navedete na naslednji način.
Eurofound (2004), EDF pension scheme incorporated into general system, article.
