The Democratic Party reopens the political game on pensions and on the 67-year old-age pension starting from 2019. The pressure to change the rule or mitigate it was opened by the Minister of Agriculture Maurizio Martina who is also deputy secretary of the democratic party. “Not all jobs are the same. And not all workers have the same life expectancy for the jobs they do. The rules wanted by the Berlusconi government and then modified by the Monti government on the automatic increase in the retirement age need to be reviewed and for this we need to postpone the entry into force of the mechanism. We all have time for a parliamentary discussion starting with the commissions in charge and I believe it is right to take all the space needed to update this decision”, Martina said yesterday Wednesday. The Minister of Labor Giuliano Poletti himself, in the previous days, had been cautious and had let it be understood that the margins for a postponement - perhaps after the spring political elections - are given that, in fact, the increase in age should start from 1 January 2019.
THE FORNERO LAW AND AUTOMATIC SHOTS
In truth, the Fornero reform envisages automatisms which oblige governments to decide, with a decree from the Minister of Labor and therefore without passage through Parliament, the raising of the age for old-age pensions - currently set at 66 years and 7 months - in based on life expectancy at 65, calculated on the basis of the previous three-year period. Furthermore, one must ask oneself whether there really is room in the budget for a change which, according to the INPS president, would dump "unsustainable costs" on the state coffers. "Blocking the adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy from 2021 onwards would cost up to 140 billion up to 2040" recalled Boeri when, a few days ago, Istat confirmed that our life expectancy is getting longer and that compared to the end of 2013 it has increased by five months. And so the retirement age is also expected to rise by five months, reaching 67 in 2019 for both men and women.
Finally, it should be remembered that theage extension will also affect early exit compared to the old age: from 2019, 43 years and three months of contributions will be required for men and 42 years and 3 months for women. It is another effect of the new data on life expectancy published by Istat. Also in this case the increase would be five months: currently it takes 42 years and 10 months for men and 41 and 10 months for women to retire.
The request of the Democratic Party therefore goes in the direction of lightening the adjustment, which otherwise Minister Poletti would have to decide by the end of the year, in the meantime seeking a solution to the social security puzzle. Shifting age to 67 would force around 80.000 people to postpone quitting work and one of the paths that the Democratic Party would like to take, collaborating with the unions and with a transversal parliamentary alignment, concerns the possibility of exempting the list of onerous jobs already connected to the Ape social from the 67-year obligation. If this remains the most accredited hypothesis at the moment, alternatively the possibility is also being evaluated of asking Istat to evaluate life expectancy for the different types of work. The latest hypothesis in the pipeline is the one that envisages inserting a straight six-month postponement of the ministerial decree, therefore after the elections have already taken place. Referral to be included in the budget law.
But all these hypotheses collide with the opposition of the Ministry of the Economy which will consider the question of the postponement of the 67 years as nothing more than a time bomb triggered on public finances. Especially if, precisely on the accounts, the impact of the reduction will be felt quantitative easing or rather the announced one reduction of purchases of public bonds on the table of the ECB which today Thursday will give the first indications to the market. Minister Pier Carlo Padoan knows that the 2018 maneuver will inevitably have to be examined by the EU Commission and knows that pensions are a fundamental cornerstone given that they absorb a very significant share of public spending. Everything could therefore end up in a soap bubble but the elections are approaching and surprises are always possible these days.
