Italy: the Conte government launches a reflection on pensions

“Consultation is necessary to arrive at a shared proposal on reforming the pension system that can guarantee greater flexibility for exiting” the world of work, announced Labor Minister Nunzia Catalfo, who is looking “to structurally change the country’s pension system within the next ten years.” A first meeting was held on 27 January and negotiations at a technical level will continue throughout February. In addition, three separate committees were set up at the start of the week, including a group of experts tasked with ‘defining guidelines and interventions’, and two technical committees, one to evaluate arduous professions and the other to differentiate the accounting for pensions and social welfare benefits (that are currently combined within Italy’s social security institute the INPS). Compared to France, Italy intends to row back on the Fornero 2011 reform that seriously toughened pensions legislation, notably with the minimum retirement age indexed on life expectancy data and currently set at 67, and the replacement of final salary-based calculations with contributions-based pensions calculations. Instituted in 2019, the ‘100 Quota’ that allowed workers aged 62 with at least 38 years of contributions to retire (in November 2019 more than 200,000 requests for the ‘100 Quota’ retirement option were lodged’), this measure was however only on a trial basis and comes to a close in 2021. The trade unions’ demands look difficult to carry through and include full retirement rights at age 62 alongside 20 years of contributions, or full retirement at any age alongside 41 years of contributions. So Conte’s government has to find a way to loosen the strict criteria of the Fornero law and/or create other more flexible avenues that can run alongside the Fornero legislation.