ROME. The Minister of Labor aims to launch an overall pension reform by the summer, aiming to simplify, rationalize, restore all management and to close with the ‘buffer’ interventions that are included in every financial maneuver from year to year ” to overcome the so-called Fornero stairway. This morning at 10 Elvira Calderone and the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti officially open the new pension construction site by meeting all together the trade unions (Cgil, Cisl, Uil and Ugl) and employers’ associations, from Confindustria to Confcommercio and Confesercenti , from artisans to cooperatives to agricultural world associations.
According to the Minister of Labour, the objective of this first table on pensions is not to “make words but to activate a broad discussion involving all the actors to arrive at a reform path focused on flexibility” finally giving certainty to who has to go in retirement but also looking at the sustainability of the entire system. “I think – Elvira Calderone explained the other day in the Senate – that we must take into account objective and subjective situations, we have workers who will increasingly have quotas exclusively with the contributory system”. According to the minister, in this context, “the re-establishment of a nucleus for verifying social security expenditure could be useful, in order to correctly define the weights of the individual managements and understand how they talk or don’t talk to each other” because sometimes the contribution payments in the various managements do not harmonize.
Calderone, in particular, aims “to launch an articulated process of analysis and comparison aimed at examining proposals for intervention on the current social security system and at assessing the economic and social impact of possible solutions of a structural nature” they explain from via Veneto. Today’s meeting will therefore be only the first in a series of technical tables and more: the meeting, in addition to collecting the positions of all the social partners, will also serve to articulate an ad hoc calendar on the specific topics which will then be the subject of subsequent meetings.
According to the tenth report of social security itineraries presented yesterday to the Chamber of Deputies, the Italian pension system in the strict sense does not have sustainability problems, however it is necessary to separate once and for all assistance from social security given that from 2008 to today this expenditure has practically doubled, reaching 144 billion out of a total expenditure of 517.7. But, as the president of IP Alberto Brambilla warns, “stability risks being undermined by too many exceptions to the Monti-Fornero reform, by the inability to adequately address the aging workforce and by the employment levels bringing up the rear in Europe” .
Minister’s plan
Through the dialogue with the social partners that starts today and a series of specialist tables, as he explained in the Senate, Calderone aims to implement a review of the pension system “in the name of solidarity and sustainability for future generations”. Three main objectives. First of all, the aim will be to close the season of experimental forms of access to the pension by aiming instead at a system of integrated forms of retirement that allows identifying the access to a pension that is most compatible with the personal and health needs of the worker and at the same time with generational turnover of employers, avoiding dangerous registry ‘stairways’. Therefore, a rationalization of the currently existing early retirement tools will be pursued, providing for sustainable forms of sharing between the burdens borne by the employer and the State with an exodus of workers closest to retirement and “targeted” generational relay paths; at the same time, forms of pension guarantee in the case of discontinuous contributory careers will be verified in favor of the younger generations. Finally, forms of enhancement of the pension position will be designed in order to consciously form a future annuity adequate to the standard of living with charges calculated according to the general principles of our pension system and forms of synergy will be introduced with the forms of supplementary pensions, devising new campaigns to join second pillar funds as a new “zero year” for allocation of severance pay for employees, adjusting the deductibility threshold of second pillar contributions.
The trade unions
For the CGIL, CISL and UIL, “it is necessary to define an age of access to retirement around 62, as happens in the rest of the EU” without explicit penalties, or to allow everyone to leave with 41 years of contributions. Then, as the confederal secretary of the Uil Domenico Proietti explains, «we need to think about the future pensions of young people, who due to the precariousness of these years have significant contribution gaps that need to be filled. It is necessary to give women a year’s pension advance for each child, to enhance the care work carried out within families for the purposes of contributions and to make the women’s option structural in its original version». And again, «we need to restore the full revaluation of existing pensions by recovering part of the lost amount. Finally, it is necessary to rekindle the spotlight on supplementary funds through a strengthening of incentive taxation and a new semester of silent assent”. In terms of flexibility, one of the hypotheses under consideration provides for giving the possibility also to those who are in the mixed system to retire before reaching old age having accrued a minimum level of pension. Now it is possible with 3 years in advance for those who are totally in the contributory and have accrued a pension amount at least equal to 2.8 times the minimum: the idea is to get to lower this threshold down to 1.5. The unions are also asking to change the current automatic mechanism for adjusting life expectancy, which is doubly penalizing because it affects both the requisites for accessing the pension and the calculation of the transformation coefficients.
The majority
On the subject of pensions, the program signed by the Brothers of Italy, Lega, Forza Italia and Noi Moderati is based on two key points: the increase in minimum, social and disability pensions and flexibility in leaving the world of work and access to retirement, favoring generational turnover. The basic objective, as is known, is to avoid a return to the Fornero law which sets the retirement age for everyone at 67. Translated into practice, however, some of the measures proposed by the individual centre-right parties do not take into account cash availability: such as, for example, Silvio Berlusconi’s proposal to raise minimum pensions to 1,000 euros. This measure alone, according to the estimates of the Observatory on public accounts of the Catholic University, would cost a good 31 billion euros, 27 according to the calculations of social security itineraries. In fact, «an unfeasible and unfeasible proposal because INPS would go into default within 4 years» ruled yesterday by the expert Alberto Brambilla. The effect of another proposal made by the League, which would like to set the future guarantee pension for young people at €1,000, is not very different. In the plans of Salvini’s party there is also the idea of allowing them to leave work with 41 years of contributions, while in favor of women a figurative annuity would be granted, the advance of the pension for each child they had and the lowering of retirement age at 63 with at least 20 contributions. Fdi, on the other hand, in addition to agreeing on the need to increase the minimum, aims to stop the automatic adjustment of the retirement age with respect to life expectancy and to confirm the “Women’s option”. It is a pity that the last budget law has seriously changed (and worsened) it.