Wave of reactions has provoked the political parties, but also a series of experts, the new proposal of one of the “sages of the German economy”, Veronika Grimm, in the media of the Funke group: that the retirement age in Germany should now be in line with the scientific data concerning the increase life expectancy of people and therefore of workers.

Grimm, who is part of the group of leading economists advising the German government, also sees the growing number of early retirements in Germany as problematic. He also believes that the labor shortage in a number of sectors of the German economy could also be addressed by raising the retirement age. “We should take care of the fact that people they want and also canto work more years, that is, we should increase the retirement age,” said Veronica Grimm.

Soltz: Five decades of work is enough…

“There are people who could work longer thanks to increasing life expectancy, but there are also manyi who is not able to do so in their 60s for physical reasons, for example in health professions.” This was a first reaction on the part of the official opposition of the Christian Democrats and the party’s general secretary Carsten Linnemann, emphasizing the “difficult” professions.

Cautious wording is also used by the Liberals, with their spokesman for labor issues Pascal Kober considering that any policy proposals in relation to long-term life planning should be credible. At the same time, the social democrat mayor of Bremen, Andreas Bobensulte, speaks with his intervention “about the profoundly unfair connection of the legal retirement age with the increase in life expectancy”.

However, it is interesting that recently the chancellor Olaf Solz, answering citizens’ questions, had said that “five decades of work is enough”, if one takes into account that in Germany many start working already at the age of seventeen. “If someone wants to work more, they should be able to do it. But not because he has to but because he can” said Olaf Solz.

This is not a new idea

However, Veronika Grimm’s proposal to increase pension limits is not new, nor does it fall into the public debate in Germany like a bolt of lightning.

Already in 2016 and the former Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble had supported the idea of the pension at 70 years, with more or less the same argumentation about increasing life expectancy, without however finding many receptive ears in the German Christian Democratic-Social Democratic coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel, the German parliament and the trade unions.

According to the current legal framework in Germany, the retirement age is set at 65 years and for those born after 1964, it is already planned to increase it to 67 years. So far the current coalition of Social Democrats-Greens-Liberals seems to be rejecting a scenario of further raising the retirement age.