Retirement of a public official: what is a discount?
Verified 01 September 2023 - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)
The haircut is a reduction that is applied to the amount of your retirement pension when you retire without entitlement to a retirement full rate. We will explain how this reduction is applied.
Please note
If you are contractual, the conditions for applying the haircut are the same as for a private-sector employee.
To understand what a full-rate pension is, as a public servant, when you retire, you are entitled to:
- To a retirement pension from the SRE: titleContent if you are a State official, or on behalf of the CNRACL: titleContent if you are a territorial or hospital official (said basic pension)
- And a pension of the RAFP: titleContent (said supplementary pension).
Your SRE or NACL basic retirement pension is granted at a full rate mainly in one of the following 2 cases:
- You retire with a sufficient number of quarters pension insurance (it varies according to your year of birth)
- You're going to a fixed age which entitles you automatically a full rate pension, no matter how many quarters you have of pension insurance
FYI
If you have worked under other status than civil servant (contract agent, employee, self-employed, etc.) and have consequently contributed to several pension funds, this is your total insurance duration, all schemes combined, which is taken into account in determining whether or not you are entitled to full-rate retirement pensions.
The conditions for a basic full-rate pension vary depending on whether you are a category civil servant sedentary or active :
Répondez aux questions successives et les réponses s’afficheront automatiquement
You're a sedentary class civil servant
You are an active category civil servant
The conditions for granting a basic full rate pension vary according to your job in the active category.
General case
Reminder
To be eligible for a pension as an active category civil servant, you must have completed at least 17 years in one or more active category jobs.
Identifier of the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Prefecture of Police of Paris, sewer
Reminder
To be eligible for a pension as a civil servant in the super-active ‘unhealthy’ category, you must meet the following conditions:
- Have completed at least 12 years in one or more jobs in the super-active category, half of them consecutively
- Have completed 32 years of effective service
Prison supervisor, active National Police personnel
Reminder
To be eligible for a pension as a super-active - National Police - Prison Service civil servant, you must have completed at least 27 years (including possibly the length of compulsory military service) in one or more super-active category jobs.
Air traffic controller
Reminder
To be eligible for a pension as an active category civil servant, you must have completed at least 17 years in one or more active category jobs.
If you retire before the age of the automatic full rate without having the required number of pension insurance quartersNo, you didn't pitch the right to a full pension. In this case, the amount of your retirement pension is reduced depending on how many quarters you are missing. This reduction is the discount.
If you retire at the age of the automatic full rate, you have right to a full pension, no matter how many quarters you have pension insurance. No haircut is not applied to the amount of your pension.
FYI
The amount of your supplementary pension of the RAFP may also be reduced or increased depending on your age of departure.
The number of missing quarters retained by the SRE: titleContent or the CNRACL: titleContent is the smaller of the following 2 numbers:
- Number of quarters missing between your retirement age and the automatic full rate cancelation age
- Number of quarters missing between your number of quarters at retirement date and the number of quarters required to qualify for a full rate pension
The number of quarters obtained is rounded up.
The maximum number of missing quarters taken into account is limited to 20.
Example :
You are a sedentary civil servant, born on the 1ster July 1962. You can retire from age 62 and 6 months. To be eligible for a full rate pension, you must either have 169 quarters or wait for your 67th birthday (at 1er July 2029).
If you decide to leave on 1er july 2025, at age 63, with only 161 quarters
- You will be missing 16 quarters between your retirement age and 67 (number of quarters between 67 and 63)
- You will miss 8 quarters between your number of quarters at retirement date and the number of quarters required to qualify for a full rate pension (169 - 161)
That's the best number, eight quarters.
The amount of your pension is reduced by 1.25% by missing quarter.
Example :
Let's go back to the previous example: you were born on the 1er July 1962. You decide to retire at age 63 on 1er July 2025 by having only 161 quarters instead of the 169 required to qualify for a full rate pension. The number of missing quarters used is 8.
Your pension is reduced by the following percentage: (8 x 1.25%) = 10%
Your pension is equal to: Last gross index salary held at least 6 months on the date of your retirement x 75% x 161 / 169
And that amount is reduced by 10%.
You can find out how many quarters of pension insurance you have by consulting your career record in your pension account, available on the official pension info website.
Your career statement summarizes, in a chronological manner, all your different professional periods.
You can print and download your career record.
You can also perform a simulation the amount of your pension at different ages, full or not, based on the data known to your pension funds.
From the age of 55 onwards, you can report to your pension funds the anomalies in your career statement and ask for their correction: missing jobs, inconsistencies, etc.
Your pension funds are directly informed.
You can then follow their treatment on your pension account:
Government officials (valuation haircut)
State officials (age of cancelation of the haircut)
Government officials (exceptions)
Government officials (exceptions)
Territorial and hospital officials (Articles 20, 65 and 65-3)