the essential
Country with the highest average age in Europe but also with the lowest birth rate on the continent, Italy cannot find concrete and effective answers to the management of its retirement system at the end of its rope. breath.
It’s difficult to be a young worker in Italy with salaries that are far from amazing and unemployment rates among the highest in the 15/24 year old category in the European Union. But the final blow was given this Tuesday, June 11 by the Italian Pension Insurance, INPS for National Social Insurance Institute, which by updating its retirement simulator, “Pensami” (Think of me), revealed that An Italian born in 1994, now aged thirty, will retire on average at age 70. “Depressing” news for Emilia, a nutritionist in Rome, recently set up on her own after long studies and years of precariousness.
“Access to the professional world is long and difficult in Italy, you only find yourself working at full capacity around the age of 35, which only further removes the prospect of a retirement in which few really believe in everything. way”, continues the young doctor resignedly who also contributes to a private supplementary pension fund “just to be sure of really receiving something for my old age”.
There is no need, that being said, to project ourselves into the future, however close it may be, to see to what extent the Italian pension situation is not satisfactory. Along with Greece and Denmark, Italy has the highest legal retirement age among EU member countries with its 67 years established in 2011 by the “Save Italy” decree of the government of Mario Monti, champion of austerity.
Oldest country in Europe
A high age, especially if put into perspective with the continental average which is 64 years and 3 months for men and 63 years and 5 months for women. “It’s not the desire or the passion that I lack, but continuing with this back pain, my osteoarthritis, for me it has become complicated” complains, despite being tough, Franco, 63 years old, agricultural employee at within a small olive oil production in Umbria, in the heart of Italy.
“Last season, alone, I moved more than 520,000 kg of crates of olives, at my age, that’s no longer possible,” notes the visibly tired man. Same story with Paola, 64, a public sector employee, who is impatiently awaiting retirement with a flexible schedule where teleworking takes pride of place. “I have an ambivalent feeling, on the one hand it is less tiring to work from home, but on the other I lose what makes working pleasant, namely the interaction with colleagues.” Almost three years before retirement, this sixty-year-old finds this end of her career “a little bland and sad”.
With almost a quarter of its population aged at least 65, Italy is the oldest country in Europe, a fact that is unlikely to improve. Fiercely opposed to the Reform Fornero, origin in 2011 of the increase in the legal retirement age to 67 years, the far-right populist parties such as Fratelli d’Italia or the Lega, now in charge, are striving to reverse this law , without convincing success for the moment.
