Pensions, brake on early retirement: 36,000 exits from Quota 102 and 103

They have long been under the lens of Brussels, as well as of the technicians of the State General Accounting Office, because they have favoured, and continue to favour, the growth of pension expenditure. Which in just six years, between 2019 and 2024, has risen by almost 70 billion. And also for this reason their progress, already much slower than a few years ago, could be completely exhausted by the end of the year. The fate of pension quotas in the classic format, i.e. in the mix of retirement age and contribution years, appears almost sealed. And the new version of Quota 103, with the link to the contributory method and the cap on the amount of the cheque, introduced by the Meloni government with the last budget law to allow early retirement in 2024 with at least 62 years of age and 41 years of contributions, albeit in a penalised version, could also be the last in the series inaugurated by the 'Conte 1' yellow-green government with Quota 100. Which, on the basis of the data available to the technical structures of the executive, between the beginning of 2019 and the end of 2023 allowed over 435,000 workers access to early treatment.

This exodus was followed by an abrupt slowdown imposed first by the Draghi government with Quota 102 (64 years and 38 years of contributions) and then with the original version of Quota 103 without constraints, which was triggered last year by the first Meloni-Giorgetti manoeuvre: between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2023 just over 36,000 workers left through these two channels. With a preference for Quota 103, with more than 23 thousand exits in 2023 alone, over Quota 102: less than 13 thousand early retirements in two years.

Indirectly confirming the waning appeal of instruments for leaving before the old age threshold are the latest data from the Inps Observatory on retirement flows, from which it emerges that the number of early pensions disbursed by the institute with effect from 2022 was more than 260,400, while those with effect from 2023 fell to 227,639. Despite this slowdown, the quota effect, together with costs for indexing treatments to inflation, continues to be felt in the trend of pension expenditure. In the Defence 'light' presented in April by the government, it is stated that up to the end of 2023 it was mainly the measures 'aimed at bringing forward retirement compared to the ordinary requirements' (i.e. the 'quotas', starting with Quota 100), those for the fight against poverty (such as the Citizenship Income) and family support interventions that drove welfare spending. Not only that: the General Accounting Office, in the special focus on social security included in the Def, in addition to targeting the repeated 'derogations' to the Fornero law, repeats that from 2029 onwards, the weight of expenditure on GDP will tend to increase significantly with a peak of 17% in 2040.

Faced with these cold numbers for the centre-right majority it will be complicated to imagine pushing Palazzo Chigi and the Mef to obtain 'expansive' measures on pensions. Even if, in any case, a decision will have to be made on the post Quota 103, which, on the basis of the rules in force, should stop on 31 December this year. In the autumn, when the next manoeuvre is drawn up, which is expected to have very little room for public finance, the government could find itself at a crossroads: either to extend the penalised version of Quota 103 for another year or, as the League is forcefully requesting, to pave the way for Quota 41 (exit with 41 years of contribution without an age threshold) but with a totally contributory structure. And the Lega Nord undersecretary for labour, Claudio Durigon, even recently said that the latter is the road that the executive is taking. Even in the contributory version, however, Quota 41 would not be a zero-cost measure. That is why this measure, should it be passed, could be accompanied, also to recover resources, by a new tightening of the indexation of higher pension cheques.