On March 30, 2023, the Congress of Deputies validated by a large majority the decree-law on the pension reform. In France, the pension reform, applied by the government without negotiating with the social agents, has led the French to demonstrate against delaying the retirement age.
In Spain, this negotiation has put on the table the need to find a financial balance to ensure the stability of the pension system. The government, to add parliamentary support, has agreed to modifications with the different political forces. The idea is to encourage workers, self-employed and salaried employees to retire at the age established by law.
But not all people are willing to wait until they have more than 30 years of contributions to retire. According to a 2020 study by the Bank of Spain on “Recent trends in the age of access to retirement”, 4 out of 10 Spaniards who retired then did so one year and four months before the legal age established in that year, it is say, 65 years and 10 months.
Many of the cases of early retirements are incentivized redundancies, plans for termination of employment that the company agrees with the employee. The company thus obtains a direct reduction in salary costs and the worker an advance of his retirement.
The different types of early retirement usually provide the employee with a monthly income until reaching the legal retirement age, contributions through the periodic payment of the Special Agreement or supplements to maintain the pension expectation.
These incentivized redundancies are usually agreed from the age of 60 to ordinary retirement, depending on the years of contribution. Although there are cases in which early retirements have been signed with workers from the age of 52.
The ordinary retirement age will continue to be delayed in the coming years, while, in parallel, the requirement for years of contributions will continue to increase until the year 2027. For those who do not plan to wait to reach 65 years with more than 38 years of contributions, there are two types of early retirement to consider:
It will be necessary to see if with the new law proposal, which wants to avoid early retirements, the current penalizing coefficients for these modalities will be modified.
At a legal, financial and tax level, early retirement can be very diverse. It is not the same to reach an early retirement if there has been an ERE, an objective dismissal, a partial retirement with a relief contract or a mutual agreement between the employee and the company in which a series of compensations are established for voluntarily leaving the job. job.
In the case of agreeing with the company on early retirement, there are different ways in which the worker can receive compensation until reaching retirement age:
The dream of being able to retire early is, in practice, a complex process: there are many aspects to take into account so that it is beneficial for both the company and the person, minimizing legal and economic risks. For this, it is best to turn to labor lawyers or specialists in procedures with Social Security, who can help in the negotiation and design a tailored social security and early retirement plan.
