From the increase in age to the crackdown on loan sharks, up to the women’s option: how pensions are changing

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Mini clampdown on access to pensions with the budget maneuver: the provision abolishes the Woman’s Option, a measure that allowed early retirement by calculating the allowance entirely with the contributory system and intervenes on strenuous work while leaving the rules on windows and on the redemption of the degree intact. It then intervenes on the increase in the requirements for access to pensions linked to life expectancy, effectively softening them. Instead of the three-month increase starting from 2027, which is effectively automatic once life expectancy has been calculated, an increase of one month is expected from 2027 and three months overall only from 2028. In practice, in 2026 you will still go into an old-age pension at 67 years of age, or into early retirement with 42 years and 10 months of contributions in addition to a three-month sliding window (one year less for women). Then from 2027 the requirements will increase by one month and from 2028 by three months.

Woman option at the final rush

For Opzione Donna these are the last days to take advantage of the measure given that next year, after several restrictions, this possibility will be eliminated completely, obviously leaving the acquired rights unchanged. The total transition to the contributory calculation which was particularly disadvantageous for those who retired in the first years of the measure is now less so because the majority of female workers have only a few years in the remuneration system (since 1996 the pro rata contributory scheme applies for those who did not have 18 years of contributions in 1995 and those who had them are now already retired). Workers who have at least 35 years of contributions, 61 years of age (reduced for women with children) and are in a difficult situation because they are fired, care givers or have a disability greater than 74% will be able to go.

TFR and usurious

The maneuver also provides that the supplementary pension income can no longer be used to access the early pension. This is possible, in the case of a fully contributory calculation, only by having achieved an allowance equal to three times the social allowance (1,638 euros gross per month in 2026), three years before the old age (64 years in 2026). Previously it was possible to add the amounts of the main pension and those of the supplementary pension, but no longer since January. According to the Budget Law, the number of companies that will have to give INPS the severance pay of employees who decide not to pay it to supplementary pensions also increases. Companies that have more than 40 employees will be obliged to pay it to the fund established at INPS (and no longer just those that have over 50), thus having to give up on keeping it within the company as a self-financing system. Furthermore, from 2033 the fund for the advance of pensions of workers engaged in very demanding activities such as those employed on the chain line and those with night shifts who have worked in these conditions for at least 7 years in the last 10 or at least half of their working life will be reduced.