Those close to retirement could retire early and receive a loan of around 800 euros every month until the requisites for obtaining the real social security check are fulfilled. At that point, through INPS, it should repay the amount received in installments by way of credit in the previous two-three years, therefore his pension would be reduced monthly by a fixed amount. This is the basic formula of the so-called pension loan, a hypothesis that has been on the table for several months by the Government to introduce greater flexibility in terms of exit. However, the Treasury technicians are working on a substantial innovation: to pay the loan would not be the State, but the company, which should pay also the missing contributions of the worker (with the aim of increasing turnover, rejuvenating the staff).
In this way, the new pension reform which the Executive intends to launch with the 2016 Stability Law – expected in Parliament by mid-October – it would not have a negative impact on public finances even in the short term, reassuring Brussels that the Italian GDP-deficit is not likely to breach the 3 percent ceiling.
At the same time, the Government would find a way to keep the promise repeatedly reaffirmed in recent months by the Minister of Labour, Giuliano Poletti, and by the Premier himself: "If a woman at 61, 62 or 63 wants to retire two or three years earlier, giving up 20-30-40 euros to enjoy the grandchild - the Premier said last May -, instead of having to pay the babysitter 600 euros, it will be necessary to find ways in which, always with attention to money, one can afford to this grandmother to go and enjoy her grandson”.
The pension loan paid by companies would therefore be a compromise useful for achieving the objectives of Palazzo Chigi without incurring vetoes from the Treasury. On the other hand, companies and employees would be called upon to find agreements that could prove difficult: the new measure in fact implies minimal intervention on the part of the State, but the cost would be high for both firms and workers.
According to a simulation by the Ansa agency, a person who leaves work two years early and receives a loan of 800 euros a month will reach retirement with a debt of 20.800 euros to the company; to repay the amount owed, the worker will have to pay the company around 1.400 euros a year over the next 15 years, or just over 100 euros a month on a pension of one thousand euros.
The first to suggest the idea of the pension loan (but in that case at the expense of the State) had been Enrico Giovannini, former Minister of Labor in the Letta government and president of Istat before that: “It is a solution aimed at workers who are very close to leaving – explained the former minister in March an interview with the newspaper La Stampa –, who can stop working by not receiving an early pension, but an advance of 7-800 euros per month for a period of two or three years on the future pension to which they will be entitled. Which they will repay actuarial later, in installments, before returning to receive the full allowance".
Faced with the objection that workers with medium-low pensions would struggle to repay the loan, Giovannini went so far as to “imagine that the company in which they are employed wants to contribute, taking part of the repayment. Or the State can also contribute”. The current government seems to think otherwise.
