The Court of Auditors is sounding the alarm over a worrying financial situation for Social Security, with a projected deficit of €18 billion in 2024 and forecasts reaching €28.4 billion in 2025 without corrective measures. In a report released on May 26, the Court of Auditors highlighted an "unsustainable" trajectory for France's social accounts, significantly weakening the Social Security system.
The Court of Auditors' alert, amplified by its president Pierre Moscovici, concerning an alleged "liquidity crisis" within Social Security, aligns with a well-established liberal rhetoric: that of austerity applied to social gains. By calling for a reduction in social spending to restore budgetary balance, Moscovici is merely reactivating a long-standing liberal discourse.
Against a backdrop of persistent inflation and the growing precarity of working-class households, these injunctions to "make savings" are not only socially unjust but also politically violent. In reality, these measures effectively shift the burden of the crisis onto workers, retirees, and precarious individuals—precisely those whom Social Security is designed to protect.
This challenge to organized solidarity isn't an economic inevitability but a political choice: one that seeks to preserve capital interests by compressing public spending and encouraging the use of private insurance. This logic is part of a broader movement to commodify common goods—health, retirement, unemployment—where anything outside the market is seen as a cost to be reduced.
It's time to put an end to this liberal refrain. Social Security isn't in crisis; its revenues are being suffocated, notably by exemptions on employer contributions.It's not our rights that need to be trimmed, but profits that need to be taxed. The question of Social Security's funding is, fundamentally, a question of societal choice.
This year, more than ever, it is our duty to defend and even expand Social Security.We are, after all, celebrating 80 years of Social Security, created in 1945 following the victory over Nazism. Eighty years later, Social Security remains a profoundly modern and revolutionary project for which we must regain the offensive!
Illustration Image: "Pierre Moscovici. Premier président de la Cour des comptes", photograph from December 3, 2019 by Cour des Comptes (CC0 1.0)
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