Is a partial French pension available for working some years in the country?
Pension amounts depend on criteria including how long you worked in France, and your salary
You need to 'validate' your trimestres
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Reader Question: I worked as a self-employed air-conditioning engineer in France from 2012 to 2018. I retired in France age 67. Am I entitled to part of a pension? I am a UK citizen but resident in France since 2011.
Yes, you will have built up a pension entitlement (likely in the low hundreds per month).
Building up some pension is a question of ‘validating’ a certain number of trimestres (quarter-years) and if you were working full-time you probably had around 28.
An amount of ‘basic’ pension will be worked out based on a calculation involving the trimestres, average income and how many years you paid in, compared to a typical ‘full’ French career.
There is also a ‘complementary’ part to your pension, based on an accumulation of points.
Depending on the year in which they were born, people can claim their self-
employment pension from ages 62-64, so you are entitled to claim now.
You can do so via the website lassuranceretraite.fr by creating a personal space.
One option for this is to use FranceConnect.
You may be familiar with this – you can use log-ins from a partner website such as impots.gouv.fr or ameli.fr.
You can obtain an estimate here.
Read more: New pension boost for self-employed workers in France
