Pensions, severance pay, Covip and early exits: the young package to strengthen complementary pension provision

Strengthen complementary social security and make it more functional for the so-called 'pension coverage' of the under-35s. This is one of the objectives that the government intends to achieve with the next manoeuvre coming in mid-October, leveraging on the social security field on a sort of mini-package for young people. This should include an intervention on the severance pay, not only limited to a new phase of silence-assent, but also measures to make access to the early exit channel less difficult with at least 64 years of age and 20 years of contributions. The executive is also thinking of giving greater strength to Covip, the supervisory commission on pension funds, increasing the current commissioners from three to five and at the same time providing for the appointment of the president, who has been on 'stand by' for a year and a half. Here are all the options currently under consideration.

With the now almost full adoption of the contribution-based method, the future pension treatments of young people, in many cases with discontinuous working careers, will be inadequate. It is mainly for this reason that the government intends to give more weight to the 'second pillar' also in an attempt to combine, as the Minister of Labour, Marina Calderone, has said, the path of compulsory social security with that of integrative forms.

The intervention that the government technicians are considering is centred on the Tfr. Three, at present, are the hypotheses in the field. The first, on a voluntary basis, envisages a new phase of 'silence-assent', in all likelihood six-monthly as on the occasion of the one triggered in 2007, and is the measure advocated by Minister Calderone himself. The second hypothesis is the one launched by the undersecretary of Labour, the Lega Nord Claudio Durigon , which aims at the compulsory allocation to complementary social security of a slice equal to 25% of the severance pay for newly hired workers only. The third option, also intended for newly-hired workers, aims to provide for a six-month period to allow the worker to make the choice of allocating 25% of the severance pay to pension funds. According to numerous social security experts, however, the path of compulsoriness does not appear to be easily practicable, also from a constitutional point of view. In any case, as the minister and also Durigon have already hinted, a massive communication campaign will be launched to make young people understand the importance of adhering to integrative social security in order to ensure a decent overall 'pension cover'.

Again with a view to paving the way for integrative forms, the executive is also thinking of giving more competences to Covip, which has been awaiting the appointment of a new president since spring 2023. The Authority's 'mandate' could thus be slightly revised. And the number of commissioners is also likely to rise, from the current three to five. As part of this operation, the new president would be identified.

The government seems intent on going down the road of mixing compulsory and supplementary pensions also in other cases. In particular, for fully contributory workers, i.e. those who have been active since 1 January 1996, a connection between supplementary pension forms and the compulsory system is being considered, also to make access to the early retirement channel less difficult with at least 64 years and 20 years of contributions. Which is tied to the attainment of a minimum treatment amount, which rose with the last budget law to at least three times that of the minimum allowance. This amount is reduced to 2.8 times for women with one child and 2.6 times for mothers with two or more children. A threshold that is not easily reachable now, but would become so by absorbing the supplementary pension income in the calculation of the amount of the allowance.