Check divided into two parts, salary and contributory and free redemption of the degree, but only for young people. And again, exit windows for fragile workers and facilities for the elderly unemployed and hard work. These are among the most urgent reforms according to the INPS president, Pasquale Tridico, which paved the way “to initiate long-term reforms”. Here’s how pensions could change, with the farewell to Quota 100, which will go on file at the end of 2021.
BOARD TOO FAR
“The sustainability of the pension system is a recurring theme in all countries, which have periodically adopted reforms to reduce long-term imbalances”, Tridico’s comment, “these reforms have resulted in a reduction in the pension allowance and in a removal over the years of the possibility of accessing the pension. This has generated a strong demand for flexibility, which has been responded to in Italy through temporary measures, from the interventions to safeguard the so-called exodates, to the social Ape, up to Quota 100 and the Woman Option ». The INPS president provided a detailed picture of how the pension reform should be worked out.
ALTITUDE 100 IN THE ATTIC.
The discussion on the reorganization of the Italian pension system was triggered again by the imminent natural expiry of the Quota 100 option, which will remain in force, as confirmed by the premier, Mario Draghi, at the end of 2021. The retirees in Quota 100, with the application accepted as of March 2, 2021, are 286,226, of which 82,394 women and 203,832 men, with about 10 billion spent out of 19 in the three-year period, according to INPS data. The pension reform, according to Tridico, “must take into account the different life expectancy for different jobs, with a lowering of the coefficient to 2.5 (now 2.8) compared to the minimum pension at 64 years of age”.
THE PROPOSALS
Tridico’s proposal also sees the hypothesis of dividing the pension allowance into two: a salary and a contributory share. And this is the major novelty, which will be discussed in the coming months. In particular, according to number 1 of INPS, “a pension advance could be envisaged with only the contribution part at 62/63 years and 20 years of contributions”. The remaining wage share would be obtained at 67, with one year less for each child of a working mother, or with the corresponding increase in the conversion coefficient, one year less for every ten years of strenuous or heavy work, or increase of the transformation coefficient correspondingly, simplifying the certification.
The proposal put forward by Tridico concerns a retirement “structural flexibility” regime, linked to the contribution method, to broaden the mesh of the overly stringent criteria required by the Fornero reform, which since 2012 introduced the retirement age of 67 years for all.
Basically, the following should be allowed: an exit with less stringent requirements with contribution recalculation to ensure actuarial balance, less stringent requirements for strenuous jobs and the calculation of life expectancy for categories of workers. As part of the current requirements for the contributory option, the coefficient is also expected to decrease to 2.5, currently at 2.8, at 64 years of age, favoring women with children.
Another interesting step, albeit reserved for younger people, increasingly exposed to a future where the pension allowance could be extremely low, if not a real utopia. To protect young people from the precariousness of employment, according to the line drawn by the INPS: long-term reforms such as a guarantee pension and training incentives, such as the full and free redemption of the degree, in order to incentivize study and training without penalizing this choice which implies a slower and more time-delayed entry into the labor market.
GENERATIONAL RELAY
Among the other good tools to be introduced, according to the president of the National Insurance Institute, also that of the “generational relay”, or the transformation of the contracts of older employees into part-time contracts and hiring of young workers: the so-called contract of expansion, which could also be extended to companies below 250 units, up to 50. A tool that serves, in particular, is to guarantee retirement five years in advance to employees (at 62 instead of 27) , to be able to hire young people.