2027 French presidential election: Satisfy retirees or work for future generations? French presidential candidates face generation divide

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By Julie Carriat and Thibaud Métais

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In DepthWith demographics shifting, people over 65 have an increasingly significant impact on the economy, the state budget and the electorate. Eight months ahead of the next presidential election, such a reality makes it difficult to have a debate about fairness between generations.

It is a ritual for every presidential hopeful: from left to right, candidates invoke young people and the future in their campaign promises. Meanwhile, France is getting older, and so is its electorate. Retirees, who account for about a third of eligible voters, represent "as much as 40% of the votes cast in national elections," political scientist Luc Rouban said. The words "gerontocracy" and "generational veto" have burst into the public debate, reviving a narrative of general warfare present since the end of the "Trente Glorieuses," a term referring to 30 years of postwar economic boom between 1945 and 1975. It is a familiar sight, pitting "well-off, selfish baby boomers who lived beyond their means and squandered the fruits of the welfare state against the generations that followed, to whom they left only debts, suffering and tears," as sociologist Camille Peugny wrote in his book Pour une Politique de la Jeunesse ("For a Policy for Youth").

The worsening of France's budget situation has made questions of how to share necessary sacrifices all the more urgent. Given the weight of pensions in the state budget, the long-taboo question of asking retirees to contribute has begun to surface. "Our social model is running out of steam," Patrick Martin, president of the MEDEF, France's largest employers' federation, said at the organization's summer conference. "The French people know it, and they say so. Young people even more so."

In an aging France, spending on the elderly, through pensions and health care, has inevitably increased, while spending on the young has declined, as can be seen in the growing temptation to respond to the falling numbers of pupils and students by cutting teaching positions. "In an aging society, we need to ensure at least a minimum level of fairness between generations," Peugny said.

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