At some point, all countries will agree to raise the limits of the retirement age, as is currently happening in France, but in our country this will not happen immediately, the Deputy Minister of Labor said yesterday. Panos Tsakloglu.

Speaking to ERT and commenting on the demonstrations taking place in France As for the retirement age raised from 62 to 64, the undersecretary responsible for social security has calculated that the French live today the way we lived in Greece in 2001. He clarified that already in our country, the general retirement age increased in 2013 to 67 years, and pointed out that although all countries will be forced to raise the retirement age in the future, this is unlikely in our country in the near future.

In particular, according to Mr. Tsakloglu, the pension systems of European countries, like almost all countries of the world, are the so-called distribution systems. That is, the pensions of current pensioners are paid out of the contributions of current employees. When these systems were created, they had many workers, few retirees, and were easy to finance.

In recent years, in all developed countries and gradually in an increasing number of developing countries, due to the aging of the population, a number of reforms have been carried out in most countries of Europe. In our country, in fact, such a reform, linking life expectancy with the retirement age, has already been implemented, unlike France, where there is no relevant legislation.

As the Deputy Minister characteristically noted, what we are seeing now in France, but to a lesser extent, is what we experienced in our country in 2001 under Mr. T. Giannitsi as Minister. The reform did not take place, which led to an increase in public debt over the previous 10 years. “We paid dearly for this as an economy and as a society,” he said characteristically.

In fact, according to Mr Tsakloglu, in Greece since 2012 the retirement age limits have been tied to life expectancy.
Of course, later in our country the age limit was also raised from 65 to 67 years.

This is also the reason why the 2012 regulation has not been activated and is not expected to be activated immediately, the deputy minister said, adding of course that at some point all countries without exception will take such a step.