The government's proposed
overhaul of the pension system, which will effectively bring
down the retirement age, risks adding around 100 billion euros
to Italy's public debt, Tito Boeri, the head of social security
and pensions agency INPS, said Thursday - prompting Deputy
Premier Matteo salvini to say Boeri should quit and run for
office.
The pension reform proposed by the M5S-League government,
which would allow workers to retire when the sum of their age
and number of years of pension contributions reaches 100, the
so-called '100 quota', would lead to an "increase of the
pensions' debt destined to weigh on future generations totalling
100 billion" euros, Boeri told the Lower House's labour
commission.
This system would make possible for a person to retire as
early as 62, if they have 38 years of contributions.
"We cannot refrain from sounding the alarm", the INPS chief
added.
Boeri should quit and run for office, Salvini retorted.
"As an Italian I urge Mr Boeri, who again today defends his
beloved Fornero (pension) law, to resign from the presidency of
INPS and run in the next elections asking for votes to send
people into retirement at 80," said the interior minister and
leader of the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League party.
"The more some big professors ask me not to touch the Fornero
law, the more convinced I am that the right to a pension for
hundreds of thousands of Italians (which means the right to work
for hundreds of thousands of young people) is one of the
greatest merits of this government".
The reform raising the retirement age to 67, which left
countless Italians without a pension or job overnight, was
passed by then Labour Minister Elsa Fornero to restore
sustainability to the system at the height of the sovereign-debt
crisis in 2011.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
