Italy will rise the retirement age

In Italy, the government announced plans to rise the retirement age for female civil servants. Currently, the age at which women could retire from public service is 61 years. But by 2012 the Italian Government intends to rise the retirement age for 4 years that will make the retirement age equal both for men and women. Male civil servants in Italy retire at 65 years. The Italian government emphasizes on the fact that rising of the retirement age is a compulsory measure in order to avoid sanctions from the EU.

According to the Italian Minister of Labor the rise of retirement age for civil servants will not affect the main bulk of Italian workers. According to the minister an innovation will affect in total of about 25 000 public servants.

It is expected that as a result of pension reform Italy will be able to save about 1.5 billion euros. This money the authorities intend to spend on funding support services for families, such, for example, as a nurse service.

Nevertheless, as noted by the AFP agency, the Italian Minister’s of Labor statement on the relative locality of new measures of reforming the pension legislation has already received critical evaluation by some Italian parliamentarians. Thus, as noted by Gianni Pagliarini, Italian Communists MP, the measures of the government is "a declaration of war on women under the guise of the EU sanctions". It is worth noting that since 2008 Brussels pressured on Rome to ensure that pension legislation in Italy has been brought into line with European norms.

Initially, the government’s plans were to introduce a new system for calculating the retirement age from 2018. However, the European Commission set for the state a deadline for the adoption of the new retirement age for women on January 1, 2012.