The Italian Minister of Civil Service has suggested that some civil servants could work until the age of 70 on a voluntary basis. This hypothesis has sometimes been distorted on French social networks.
At a time when several French political organizations are campaigning for a reversal of the 2023 pension reform, is Italy moving towards retirement at 70? On social networks, several French political leaders have posted messages affirming this, such as the rebellious MP Clémence Guetté, who was outraged: “The Italian far right wants retirement at 70. During the campaign, Meloni promised something completely different. The far right and neoliberalism always go hand in hand.”
The tweet from the LFI MP is based on a BFM article announcing: “Italy, the Minister of the Economy wants retirement at 70”. In the image, a screenshot from the continuous news channel shows this banner “Pensions: Italy goes to 70 years!”
Manuel Bompard, also an LFI MP, posted a similar message: “In Italy, once in power, Le Pen and Bardella’s friends want retirement at 70.”
In the other political camp, Aurélien Véron, member of the Paris municipal council, also relayed: “The Italian Minister of Economy announces that he wants to set the retirement age at 70. In Germany, they are considering raising this threshold from 67 to 71… Principle of financial and demographic reality: have children!”
If they are based on any truth, these statements are misleading. In an interview with Serra Courier, On September 9, the Minister of Civil Service, Giovanni Zangrillo, explained that he wanted to make the administration more efficient by hiring 350,000 young employees, but also by keeping its most experienced professionals, provided that they are volunteers. In this interview, the minister proposes several measures to address the challenges of human resources management in the public sector, particularly due to the aging of the workforce and the difficulties in recruiting in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).
Which led him to think about the “postponement of retirement age”Asked about this idea, the minister explained that “First of all, I would like to point out that employees in the security and defence sector retire at 60, while all the others retire at 65 with at least 42 years and I don’t know how many months of contributions, or at 67. When drawing up the seven-year medium-term budget plan, which will be included in the next budget law, we discussed with the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti the possibility of looking further into the opportunity to keep people in service until the age of 70. This is precisely because we are hiring a very large number of people and many young people.”
And to explain that the proposal would apply to “administrations, including decentralized ones, which consider as an important management lever the retention of a certain number of employees in work until the age of 70 as a percentage of turnover [le taux de renouvellement du personnel d’une entreprise ; ndlr]. On a voluntary basis”According to the minister, this should concern approximately 10% of annual departures depending on the renewal of staff in the civil service.
At this stage, no general proposal to increase the retirement age to 70 has been formulated for all Italians, nor even for civil servants. The project, currently being studied by the Ministry of Public Administration in consultation with the Ministry of Economy, would therefore concern voluntary civil servants. Enough, however, to provoke opposition from the main unions, as reported by the Italian press agency ANSA. The head of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), Maurizio Landini, described the hypothesis as “madness”.
The proposal comes as the Italian government, faced with budgetary difficulties, has turned its back on Meloni’s campaign promise to reform the pension system by introducing a scheme called “quota 41”, opening up the possibility of starting work with 41 years of contributions, regardless of age.
