Germany Backs Raising Retirement Age Beyond 67 Amid Ageing Population
Germany will gradually raise the retirement age above 67, abolish early retirement and expand compulsory pension contributions under a set of new recommendations backed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday.
Like many industrialized economies, Germany is struggling with an aging population and last year appointed an expert commission to draft proposed reforms to its pension system.
Presenting its findings on Tuesday, the commission said the retirement age should be linked to life expectancy and gradually raised above 67.
He proposed scrapping the scheme that allows people to retire early at age 63 and extending compulsory retirement contributions to civil servants and self-employed workers.
“All elements of this reform package… must now be implemented quickly,” Merz told a press conference, adding that “we cannot afford to lift or reject individual measures.”
Merz added that the proposals “aim to achieve two goals: pensions remain secure and burdens are distributed fairly across all segments of society and all generations.”
Opposition parties and unions expressed criticism of some of the proposals previously published in the German media.
Left-wing party Die Linke said people would “work harder, longer” under the changes.
Union Verdi said the proposal to cancel the early retirement scheme showed “a complete disregard for the lifetime achievements of the individuals concerned”.
Proposals must be debated and voted on in parliament before becoming law.
Merz, who has been in office for just over a year, has struggled to deliver on promises of sweeping reforms and the revitalization of Germany’s stagnant economy.
Tensions have risen between Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc, which wants harsher cuts in benefits, and their junior coalition partners, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
However, on Tuesday the SPD also said it supported the pension proposals, while Labor Minister Baerbel Bas said he was “very confident” the reforms would be supported in parliament.
In 2024, the last year for which statistics are available, approximately 19 million people in Germany were aged 65 or over; this accounted for approximately 23 percent of the total population.
In 1991, only 15 percent of the population was over 65 years of age.
