Poland switches to lower retirement age
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
01.10.2017 08:30
New retirement rules took effect in Poland on Sunday under which women are able to retire at 60 and men at 65.
Photo: stevepb/pixabay.com/CC0 Creative Commons
This is after Poland’s ruling conservatives reversed a 2012 reform by the previous government that would have ultimately increased the retirement age to 67 for both sexes.
Elżbieta Rafalska, the family, labour and social policy minister, has voiced hope that many Poles will decide to defer their retirement and stay active professionally despite the new rules.
She said that retirement is a right and not an obligation.
So far, 275,700 people have completed paperwork to retire under the new regulations, a spokesman for the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), Wojciech Andrusiewicz, has told the PAP news agency.
He added that the institution was sticking to its estimates that no more than 331,000 people would ask to retire in the last quarter of this year.
Andrusiewicz has previously said that ZUS has "identified all the clients who can benefit from the reduced retirement age" and is prepared to handle paperwork for all of them.
But not all of these people will decide to leave the job market despite the new rules, according to Andrusiewicz. (gs/pk)
Source: PAP