Is a partial French pension available for working some years in the country?

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