ARRCO, AGIRC, and Contingency Fund Contributions

All employees in the French private sector, must contribute for their basic pension with the Social Security, and more specifically with the Retirement Insurance or the Mutualité sociale agricole. They must also contribute for their supplementary pension under the Agirc-Arrco scheme.

On 1 January 2019, the complementary retirement scheme for private sector employees was simplified with the merger of AGIRC (Supplementary Retirement of Executives) and ARRCO (Supplementary Retirement for Employees) into a single scheme, the AGIRC-ARRCO. The new AGIRC-ARRCO plan ensures the future of the supplementary pension. It strengthens the system and simplifies its management. Generally, all payees, except apprentices and trainees, are responsible for contributing to the AGIRC-ARRCO ARRCO or AGIRC funds.

Contributions to AGIRC-ARRCO and ARRCO/AGIRC are based on the same funding bases as for URSSAF and ASSEDIC, with one difference. Contributions that exceed part of the complementary contingencies contribution limits are included in the URSSAF funding base, but not in the ARRCO/AGIRC funding bases.

Since January 1, 2019 (date of implementation of the Agirc-Arrco scheme), employees, regardless of non-executive or executive status, contribute to the Agirc-Arrco scheme on their entire salary within the limit of 8 ceilings of Social Security. The Agirc-Arrco contribution system provides for two salary brackets and two contribution rates:

Tranche 1

  • Upto the social security ceiling

  • Rate= 7.87%

Tranche 2

  • Between 1 and 8 times the Social Security ceiling

  • Rate = 21.59%

Pursuant to past commitments, some companies apply contribution rates higher than those mentioned above.

The distribution of contributions is 60/40: 40% for the employee share and 60% for the employer share.

To these contribution rates are added: the general equilibrium contribution (CEG) and the technical equilibrium contribution (CET). These 2 contributions are split 40% by the employee and 60% by the employer. The CET applies to tranche 1 and tranche 2 for any employee whose remuneration exceeds the social security ceiling.

The Agirc-Arrco pension funds also collect, on behalf of the Association for the employment of executives (Apec), a contribution at the rate of 0.06% salary share: 0.024%; employer's share: 0.036%) on executive salaries, within the limit of four Social Security ceilings.

Starting from January 2023, URSSAF will be in charge of collecting these deductions and distribute them to the corresponding organism.

It was originally scheduled for January 2022, but it was delayed until 2023.

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