{"id":2091,"date":"2026-06-24T06:11:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T06:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2026-06-24T06:11:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T06:11:31","slug":"the-german-government-thinks-failure-is-not-an-option-in-its-quest-to-raise-the-retirement-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2091","title":{"rendered":"The German government thinks \u2018failure is not an option\u2019 in its quest to raise the retirement age"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Merz\u2019s coalition of center-right and center-left parties\u00a0took office just over a year ago\u00a0with pledges to reform and turn around Germany\u2019s sluggish economy, Europe\u2019s biggest. It has since become deeply unpopular, in part because of perceptions that it has squabbled but so far achieved little.<\/p>\n

Read more France rues widespread lack of air conditioning as country roasts under 104-degree heat wave<\/a><\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s economy returned to\u00a0modest growth last year\u00a0after shrinking for two years in a row. The government expects underwhelming growth of 0.5% this year, a figure that has been pushed down by the fallout from the\u00a0war in Iran.<\/p>\n

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The country of 83.5 million people already faced increasing competition from Chinese companies, higher energy costs following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and issues including U.S. President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0\u2018s tariffs and trade threats. On top of that, it has deeper problems such as high production costs, lagging private investment and increasingly costly health and pension systems, caused by an aging population.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a government-mandated panel of experts and politicians delivered 33 recommendations to stabilize the pension system. The aim is to prevent the level of pensions from falling and ward off the need for a big long-term increase of the levy employees pay into the pension system. They currently contribute 18.6% of gross wages.<\/p>\n

Germany has long faced the problem that \u201cfewer and fewer contributors have to finance pensions for more and more retirees,\u201d Merz said. \u201cDoing nothing is not an option.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel\u2019s central proposals include introducing market investments as an element of individuals\u2019 pension insurance to relieve financial pressure on the system, based on a model used in Sweden.<\/p>\n

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Germany moved two decades ago to raise the regular retirement age from 65 to 67, implementing the change gradually. The commission proposed going beyond that to raise it in line with life expectancy starting in 2031. The life expectancy in Germany is 78.5 years for men and 83.2 years for women, according to the national statistics office.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018London isn\u2019t just calling\u2014it\u2019s cooking.\u2019 Europe\u2019s largest economies face over $600 billion in heat-driven losses by 2030<\/a><\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s co-chairperson, Constanze Janda, said the change would affect the retirement age \u201cmoderately,\u201d and that it would increase by about six months over 10 years if life expectancy continues to rise as it is now.<\/p>\n

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In the mid-2010s, Germany started allowing people who have paid pension contributions for 45 years to retire at 63 without a financial hit. The panel proposed scrapping that financial provision and raising the minimum retirement age to 64.<\/p>\n

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It also said that the age at which people can start reducing their working hours ahead of retirement should be raised from 55 to 58.<\/p>\n

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The conservative Merz said his coalition intends to \u201cimplement in full,\u201d and quickly, the proposals put forth by the commission. That intention was echoed by Labor Minister B\u00e4rbel Bas, the co-leader of the center-left Social Democrats.<\/p>\n

They will likely face plenty of work to get the package through parliament, where the governing coalition has a relatively thin minority. The proposals already have drawn criticism from labor unions.<\/p>\n

Read more MSCI delays Indonesia\u2019s market status review until November<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFailure is not an option,\u201d Merz said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chancellor Merz endorsed 33 pension reforms Tuesday \u2014 including a Swedish-style investment model Germany has resisted for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[335],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-germany"],"yoast_head":"\nThe German government thinks \u2018failure is not an option\u2019 in its quest to raise the retirement age - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=2091\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The German government thinks \u2018failure is not an option\u2019 in its quest to raise the retirement age - 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