ÖVP seniors reject raising retirement age to 67

Austria’s ÖVP Senior Citizens’ Association opposes raising the statutory retirement age from 65 to 67, ORF reports. Association president Ingrid Korosec said on Tuesday that the pension system’s costs were being calculated incorrectly, while economic researchers argue that an increase is necessary because of rising life expectancy and high pension costs.

The Austrian Institute of Economic Research said this week that raising the retirement age was unavoidable because the pension system’s growing costs could not otherwise be financed.

The Austrian state expects to spend about 126 billion euros this year. More than a quarter of that amount, around 34 billion euros, is allocated to the pension system, including pensions paid to public servants. More than 20 billion euros goes to statutory pension insurance.

Korosec said those figures also included costs for rehabilitation stays and measures to combat poverty. “These are social costs, this is poverty reduction and so on. Twenty-three percent of the total costs have nothing to do with pensions,” she said. Describing the rising pension costs as explosive amounted to “senior bashing”, the association said.

The association said it was not opposed to reforms in principle but that raising the retirement age to 67 was not currently an option. Korosec said about 28 percent of people aged between 55 and 65 did not move directly from employment into retirement, but instead came from unemployment, sick leave or social assistance.

The association said the priority should be keeping people in employment until the age of 65. It called for companies that hire older workers to receive financial compensation.