The Northern League member and Undersecretary of Labor Claudio Durigon explained that the idea would be to allow workers who started paying contributions before 1996 to retire at 64 years of age: according to INPS estimates this would be around 80 thousand more pensions. “There will be an impact of 1.5 billion per year.” The League representative said he sees it as "an operation to give breathing space to the labor market and make it more efficient".
Read also: Pensions, hypothesis of early exit at 64: the possible innovations of the 2027 Budget
Already today, however, there are those who have the possibility of leaving their job at 64. This is an early pension, i.e. "a service that allows workers with certain contribution requirements to access the pension allowance early before reaching the age required for the old-age pension", as explained by the INPS. However, there are some requirements to be respected, and the first and most important is the following: today only those who fall entirely within the contributory system, therefore those who started paying after 1 January 1996, can retire at 64.
For this category of workers, there are two other conditions to be respected: having "at least 20 years of effective contributions until 2026, with the exclusion of notional contributions", and "a first pension installment of no less than three times the monthly amount of the social allowance (revalued every year)". However, this limit is "reduced to 2.8 times, for women with one child" and to "2.6 times for women with two or more children, the monthly amount of the Social Allowance".
Furthermore, INPS also specifies that "the right to the first effective date is achieved three months after the fulfillment of the requirements", the so-called 'window'. And "to obtain an early pension, the termination of the employment relationship is necessary. However, the termination of the activity carried out as a self-employed worker is not required".
These parameters, however, are already destined to change at the end of this year. In fact, the age requirement for early retirement will move to 64 years and 1 month for 2027 and 64 years and 3 months for 2028. And the same change will occur for the actual contribution: from 2027, 20 years and 1 month of payments will be necessary, which will rise to 20 years and 3 months in 2028.
It is in this context that the - so far possible - reform of the pension system should be inserted. Based on what has transpired so far, and while waiting for a text to be actually presented, the proposal would also allow those who started working before 1 January 1996 to access an early pension. However, there would be a recalculation of the contribution of the allowance: in fact, those who have contributions prior to that date still fall into the mixed system. "Retiring early is the worker's choice, he can choose how and when he wants", said the Undersecretary of Labour, Claudio Durigon.
The proposal, however, does not seem to have been welcomed with enthusiasm by everyone: the CGIL in fact underlines that the possible possibility of accessing retirement at 64 "would be accompanied by the recalculation of the entire pension with the contributory system". The union's simulations show that with 40 years of contributions and an annual salary of 35 thousand euros, the pension calculated with the mixed system would be around 1,726 euros per month, but with the recalculation of contributions it would drop to around 1,543 euros: this would be over 182 euros less each month, "equal to a reduction of 10.6%". If, however, the salary was 50 thousand euros, the loss would rise to 261 euros per month, and with 70 thousand euros it would reach over 365 euros per month.
Read also: Early retirement at 64, CGIL against proposal: "Hundreds of euros less per month"
