The Ministry of Health has voiced criticism against the proposed increase in the retirement age in the Czech Republic. This proposal, part of the pension reform, was suggested by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Unions, among others, have also joined the opposition against the proposal.
The reform suggests that the retirement age will not be fixed in the future but will be determined by life expectancy. It won’t stop at the age of 65, which is expected to be reached by most people by 2035, but will gradually increase without limit. For instance, people born after 1981 could, according to the reform documents, retire after their 67th birthday.
The Ministry of Health criticizes the continuous extension of the retirement age, stating that the population over 65 is not in a health condition to provide the necessary work performance in the following years. Unions also harshly criticize the reform, mainly because early pensions for demanding professions have not been resolved about the increase in retirement age, and there are not enough analyses for it.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, led by Marian Jurečka, justifies the pension reform to stabilize the pension system’s deficits. “The proposal contains such changes that we can ensure decent pensions for current pensioners, but also their children and grandchildren,” he said during its presentation.
However, the increase in the retirement age also worries the Office for Foreign Relations and Information, a civilian intelligence service. By law, their service relationship should end at 65 years. They warned that a situation may arise in the future when an officer ends his service relationship without being entitled to a service allowance. Still, his entitlement to an old-age pension has not yet occurred.
The Czech Statistical Office criticized the way the Ministry of Labour wants to calculate the retirement age. It noted that the proposal fixes the calculation methodology to a procedure from 2015, which would inevitably lead to using two different life expectancies: the currently published one as a reference value in demographic statistics and another, with an older methodology, for the proposed law.