Culture, language and local politics may make each debate different, but the European Union's two largest economies face the same problem – how to cover the rising costs associated with the retirement of the baby boom generation.
The problem is both demographic and financial. Falling birth rates mean there are not enough young people to offset the retirement boom at a time when economic growth is slow, wages have stagnated and purchasing power is not developing at the same rate as previous generations.
As real estate prices skyrocket, young people feel that home buying and other opportunities that their parents' generation enjoyed are increasingly out of reach.
Faced with tight budgets due to priorities such as rearmament in response to Russian aggression, reindustrialization and ecological transformation, more and more young politicians from the center and right are criticizing retirees for not contributing to solving this problem.
Some German lawmakers, such as 34-year-old Johannes Winkel, call for greater “intergenerational justice”. French MP Guillaume Kasbarian, 38, goes a step further, arguing that France should rethink its pay-as-you-go system – similar to Germany's – in which current workers finance retirees' pensions through taxes.
Attacking pensioners is a politically dangerous move. They are a reliable group of voters who go to the polls in greater numbers than younger generations – and they tend to be centrists.
French MP Guillaume Kasbarian, Paris, France, October 31, 2025.Amaury Cornu / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP / AFP
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative bloc received an estimated 43 percent. votes of people aged 70 and over in February's parliamentary elections, and older voters helped Macron secure re-election in 2022.
French Budget Minister Amelie de Montchalin told MPs last month that I don't want to “cause a generational war” in connection with the government's fiscal plans for next year.
But she – like her counterparts across the Rhine – may have no choice.
“Fair for all generations”
This week, French lawmakers are arguing over a very controversial plan to freeze the indexation of pensions based on inflation next year. This is part of a broad effort to reduce the budget by billions of euros and bring the deficit below 5%. GDP.
The debate in France resembles similar conversations in Germany. Winkel is part of a group of young conservatives who they rebelled against the pension reform package presented by the Merz government. They argue that current benefits for the elderly are too generous and demand a plan that is “fair for all generations.”
A group of leading economists argued in an article published in the German newspaper Handelsblatt that Merz's proposed pension package would be “harmful to the younger generation, which is already under increasing financial pressure.”
Johannes Winkel, Berlin, Germany, December 2, 2025MICHAEL KAPPELER / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance / AFP
German coalition leaders decided to resolve the dispute last week, and Merz has promised to undertake a second, more far-reaching set of pension reforms next year.
However, it is not clear whether this proposal satisfied all young conservatives. In a letter published this week, the group said 18 MPs would decide individually how they would vote on the pension package, which is due for a vote on Friday. Every vote will matter because Merz's fragile coalition has a majority of only 12 MPs.
On Tuesday, Merz's center-right bloc held a test vote to check whether there was sufficient conservative support for adopting the pension reform package. The results of the internal vote were unclear.
Opinion polls in Germany and France show that a majority of the public is in favor of protecting existing pension and benefit systems. Left-wing parties in both countries also strongly oppose measures that would freeze or reduce pension benefits, arguing that the public pension system is an essential element of social cohesion.
However, there are divisions between generations.
“Pension measures show an intergenerational divide: they are massively rejected by retirees, but supported by almost every second person from the younger generation (aged 18-24),” according to an analysis by French opinion pollster Elabe published in October.
In another poll by the Odoxa institute, a slim majority of working-age people in France agreed that current retirees “are in a better position because they could retire earlier than those still working.”
Key differences
However, there are key differences between France and Germany. Pension benefits in France are much more generous than in Germany and help keep the poverty rate among people aged 65 and over lower than that of the general population.
In Germany, the opposite is true – people over 65 are worse off than people under 65, partly because public pensions became relatively lower after pension reforms in the 2000s.
Ultimately, however, according to Arnaud Lechevalier, an economist at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, demography and economics differ so much between generations that creating a “fair” pension system is almost impossible.
The idea that every generation can get the same return on investment from working-age premiums is, in Lechevalier's words, “an extremely stupid idea.”
