Réforme des retraites et marché du travail : une mission impossible ?.

Pensions reforms have been accelerating in Europe since the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s : a common trend consists of strengthening the link between the individual contribution period and the level of pension. In a first part of the paper, we show that this common trend takes place within heterogeneous national contexts : the differences in terms of seniors position an the labour market, and thus in the effective capacity to adapt to the new constraints are very important. In some countries, like France and Germany, this consistency problem seems to be very acute, meaning a kind of impossible mission... Therefore, the question of how to reform the link between the labour market and pensions reforms raises : we deal with this problem in a second part. We show that taking into account on the one hand the multiple dimensions of the choice to stay in activity (including working conditions, training... and more generally the various components of the quality of work), on the other hand the conclusions from non standard approaches of labour market and social protection reforms, helps overcoming the difficulties which are related to incentive focused perspective.