Germany will raise its retirement age gradually beyond 67, abolish early retirement and expand compulsory pension contributions under a set of new recommendations backed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Germany, like many industrialised economies, is struggling with an ageing population and last year appointed an expert commission to come up with suggested reforms to its pension system.<\/p>\n
Presenting its findings on Tuesday, the commission said the retirement age should be linked to life expectancy and gradually raised beyond 67 now.<\/p>\n
It recommended abolishing a scheme that allows people to retire early at 63, and expanding compulsory pension contributions to include civil servants and self-employed workers.<\/p>\n
“All elements of this reform package… must now be implemented swiftly,” Merz told a press conference, adding that “we cannot afford to remove or reject individual measures”.<\/p>\n
Merz added that the proposals aim to meet “two goals: pensions remain secure, and the burdens are distributed fairly across all segments of society and across all generations”.<\/p>\n
Opposition parties and unions have voiced criticism of some of the proposals, which had previously been published in German media.<\/p>\n
The left-wing party Die Linke said that under the changes people would be “working even longer, working even more”.<\/p>\n
The trade union Verdi said the proposal to scrap the early retirement scheme showed “a total disregard for the lifetime achievements of the people concerned”.<\/p>\n
The proposals must still be debated and voted on in parliament before becoming law.<\/p>\n
In office for just over a year, Merz has struggled to deliver on his promises of sweeping reforms and a revival of Germany’s stagnant economy.<\/p>\n
Tensions have brewed between Merz’s conservative CDU\/CSU bloc, which has pushed for tougher welfare cuts, and their junior coalition partners, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).<\/p>\n
However, the SPD on Tuesday also said it supported the pension recommendations, with Labour Minister Baerbel Bas declaring that she was “very confident” the reforms will be supported in parliament.<\/p>\n
Around 19 million people in Germany were aged 65 or older — about 23 percent of the total population — in 2024, the latest year for which statistics are available.<\/p>\n
In 1991, only 15 percent of the population was aged over 65.<\/p>\n
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