From the age increase to the squeeze on the usurious, to the women's option: how pensions are changing

The budget manoeuvre is a mini-tightening on access to pensions: the measure abolishes the Women's Option, a measure that made it possible to retire early by calculating the allowance entirely with the contribution-based system, and intervenes on arduous work, while leaving intact the rules on windows and on the redemption of university degrees. It then intervenes on the increase in the requirements for the access to retirement linked to life expectancy, in fact softening them. Instead of the increase by three months from 2027, which is de facto automatic once life expectancy is calculated, there will be an increase by one month from 2027 and by three months in total only from 2028. In practice, in 2026 people will still be able to retire with 67 years of age, or retire early with 42 years and 10 months of contributions plus three months of moving window (one year less for women). Then from 2027 the requirements will increase by one month and from 2028 by three months.

For Opzione donna these are the last days to take advantage of the measure since next year, after several squeezes, this possibility will be eliminated altogether, obviously leaving acquired rights unchanged. The total switch to the contributory calculation, which was particularly disadvantageous for those who retired in the first years of the measure, is now less so because there are only a few years that most workers have under the retributive system (since 1996 the pro rata contributory system has been in force for those who did not have 18 years of contributions in 1995 and those who did have them are now already retired). Female workers who have at least 35 years of contributions, 61 years of age (reduced for women with children) and are in a difficult situation because they are dismissed, care givers or have a disability of more than 74% will be able to go.

The manoeuvre then stipulates that one can no longer use the annuity of the supplementary pension for access to early retirement. This is possible, in the case of a fully contributory calculation, only having reached an allowance equal to three times the social allowance (EUR 1,638 gross per month in 2026), three years before old age (in 2026 at the age of 64). Previously, the amounts of the main pension and the supplementary pension could be added together, from January no more. According to the Budget Law, the number of companies that will have to transfer the severance pay of employees who decide not to pay it into the supplementary pension fund to Inps will also increase. Companies with more than 40 employees (and no longer only those with more than 50) will be obliged to pay it into the fund set up at the Inps, thus having to give up holding it in the company as a self-financing system. In addition, the fund for the advancement of pensions of workers engaged in very demanding activities such as those employed on the chain line and those with night shifts who have worked in these conditions for at least 7 years in the last 10 or at least half of their working life will be reduced from 2033.