The EU Commission expects Greece to raise the statutory retirement age to 68 by 2030. A role model for Germany?
Greece plans to raise the retirement age to 68 by 2030. The basis is a legal mechanism for adjusting to life expectancy.
Demographic change makes adaptation necessary. The number of people of working age is expected to fall from around 4.65 million in 2025 to 3.07 million in 2080, while the proportion of people over 65 is increasing.
Experts believe that automatic adjustment also makes sense in other countries. Then the retirement age would no longer be part of the political debate.
Athens. Greek employees must prepare to work longer. In 2030, the normal retirement age could rise from the current 67 to 68. Greece would then have, together with Denmark, the longest working life in the EU.
By 2080, retirement age could even rise to 72 years. This emerges from the European Commission's new “Aging Report 2027”, which examines the consequences of aging for Europe's economy.
The basis of the forecast is a mechanism that has been enshrined in law in Greece since 2021, which links the retirement age to life expectancy. However, the age limit has remained unchanged since it was raised to 67 during the national debt crisis in the 2010s.
It was not adjusted at the last review in 2024 because the remaining life expectancy of 65-year-olds had increased by less than a year compared to 2010 - a result of the corona pandemic.
The mechanism is likely to take effect for the first time at the next review in 2027. Early retirement will then also be pushed back: from the current age of 62 to 63 from 2030 and in the long term to 67 by 2080. However, anyone who has at least 40 years of insurance can still retire early at the age of 62.
Fewer and fewer contributors
The pressure to adapt is primarily due to demographic reasons. Greece is one of the countries in Europe with the lowest birth rates. Currently, a woman only has 1.2 children on average. Even if the rate rises to 1.45 by 2080, the EU report predicts, it will remain far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population.
At the same time, life expectancy is increasing. According to the forecast, women born in 2025 will live to an average of 84.5 years and men to 79.5 years. For the 2080 birth cohort, the commission expects an increase to 90.1 or 86.4 years. This also extends the period of pension receipt.
Greece's population will shrink from 10.4 million in 2025 to 7.6 million in 2080, according to the EU forecast. At the same time, the proportion of people over 65 years old grew from 23.9 to 34.6 percent. In 2080, for every 100 people between the ages of 20 and 64, there will be almost 70 people over 65. The ratio is currently 100 to 41.
The number of people of working age will fall from around 4.65 million to 3.07 million, the report said. Fewer and fewer contributors have to pay for more and more pensioners.
The Commission also expects that more people will remain working into old age. The average age at which people leave the labor market is expected to rise from 64.9 years in 2025 to 65.7 years in 2030 and 68.6 years in 2080. The proportion of employed people aged 65 to 69 could increase from the current 17.9 percent to more than 50 percent in 2080.
However, it remains to be seen whether all employees will be able to work longer due to their health and whether companies will offer enough suitable jobs.
Germany before the same debate
In addition to Greece, countries such as Italy, Denmark, Estonia and Slovakia have also linked the retirement age to life expectancy. Finland wants to introduce this mechanism in 2030. Experts see this as an advantage: automatism removes the sensitive question, at least in part, from party-political controversies and short-term election campaign interests.
Germany also has to adapt to an aging society. The standard retirement age is to gradually increase to 67 by 2031. There is currently no automatic link to life expectancy. Any further increase must be decided politically and approved by parliament.
However, Greece is not an easy role model. The country had to make drastic pension cuts during the debt crisis due to pressure from international donors. Despite these cuts, the average net replacement rate, which describes the ratio of the net pension to the last net salary, is 88.5 percent in Greece, according to the international economic organization OECD.
For comparison: In Germany it is only 53.3 percent. However, the high rate in Greece is put into perspective by the lower income level. According to Eurostat, the average full-time salary in Greece was 18,800 euros gross in 2025, compared to the EU average of 41,500 euros gross. Despite the high replacement rate, the net old-age pension in Greece was only 795 euros per month, compared to 1,195 euros in Germany.
