The Council of Ministers has approved a royal decree that reforms access to flexible retirement with three significant new features that will be applied within three months. This type of retirement allows combining the pension with a certain degree of work activity, and it is one of the incentives used by the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security to extend the working life of workers. Incentives that are now increased.
Read more Page calls for elections or a vote of confidence: “This is the moment of greatest risk for the PSOE”
The main change is that access to partial retirement is also extended to the self-employed. If until now it was limited to salaried workers, from now on those who work on their own account will also be able to take advantage of this figure, with one condition: that they have not been registered as self-employed in the three years prior to the retirement date. In addition, it will not be necessary to wait for a minimum period from retirement to request flexible retirement. It can be accessed at any time.
An improvement in economic incentives is also added. These self-employed workers who combine pension collection with part-time activity will have the range for this working day go from 33% to 80%, when the current margin was from 25% to 75%.
And the amount of the pension will be reduced in inverse proportion to the reduction of a working day. Here a change is included to encourage return to the labor market. If flexible retirement is accessed after six months from retirement, the pensioner will receive an additional percentage of the pension. In this way, part-time days that are between 55% and 80% will increase the pension amount by an additional 25%; and those between 33% and 55% will increase by an extra 15%.
In the case of self-employment, the pensioner may receive up to 25% of the pension while performing the compatible activity.
Read more Ayuso’s infrastructures for the Pope’s visit: from the Royal House of the Post Office to Ifema
“Our goal is for workers to have more and better options when retiring or combining employment and pension, and now we propose an improved flexible retirement modality,” said the Minister of Inclusion and Social Security, Elma Saiz, in explaining the agreement.
More incentives to stimulate what the ministry calls “active aging.” For example, a pensioner who had involuntarily accessed early retirement, if they opt for flexible retirement, when they return to full retirement will see their payment improved. Their regulatory base and the percentage that can be applied will be recalculated, based on the new contribution period.
This modification adds to the reforms that have been applied since 2021 to make the transition from employment to retirement more flexible and bring the effective age closer to the legal retirement age. And with some results. In the May data, it is seen how the average age of pension access has already risen to 65.5 years, which is one year more than that recorded in 2018.
There is also an evolution in early retirements, which have been reduced to 30%, and in workers who extend their working life beyond the ordinary age, currently exceeding 12%.
