But if things don’t go to plan, then the pay-as-you-go principle can start to come unstuck and benefits may need adjusting to more affordable levels.

How are the amount of benefits worked out in the French Pension Scheme?

The way benefits are worked out in the French compulsory pension schemes is by an accumulation of ‘pension credits’. These pension credits are converted into a pension at retirement, so the value of the pension credits from time to time is of acute interest to those saving in this way for their retirement incomes.

Before 2003 you had to work for 37.5 years to get enough credits for a French pension. The average pension amounted to 50% of the pensioner's average salary based on the average of their ten highest earning years
(up to a maximum of about £15,000).

In 2003 the law changed and you had to work for 40 years and would receive 50% of the average salary calculated on the 20 highest earning years.

This meant that the average total paid out by the pension credits scheme was reduced.

The banking collapse of 2008 - 2009 and the high unemployment that the knock on effect caused has made the pay as you go pension scheme system hugely unstable and coupled with the increasing life spans of the population there are just not enough funds going into the system which is causing a large deficit.

On the 15th September 2010 The French ruling UMP party passed a controversial reform bill which would raise the minimum pension age from 60 to 62. The huge deficit that the pensions scheme payments have caused after the banking and economic crises has made some reform to the system inevitable.

This is not the way that all of the French see it.

 The leader of the Socialists in the Assembly Jean-Marc Ayrault, said that his party also believed reform was "indispensable"."But unlike you, we do not accept that the weight and the price of the crisis is borne by its victims."

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