The government, meeting in a restricted committee, held a first round of discussions on pension reform on Friday, with a focus on methodology and the next deadlines.
Friday's discussions will be followed by bilateral meetings between the Prime Minister, Minister of Pensions Karine Lalieux and the Deputy Prime Ministers, Lalieux’s office said.
Based on proposals made by the minister in recent months, the government is to meet a series of objectives around three measures decided in July.
These are the pension bonus, the condition of actual work required to benefit from the minimum pension, and how to better take into account the situation of women, who make much more use of part-time work than men.
More equality between men and women
Two objectives have been put forward so far: budget neutrality and more equality between men and women. A third objective was mentioned on Friday: more solidarity between large and small pensions.
In a study published last month, the Planning Bureau made a number of remarks about the July pension reform, including the pension bonus, which is a pension supplement for up to three years of work to encourage people to work longer.
In the long term, this measure would raise the budgetary cost of ageing: by 2070, the increase would be between 0.1% and 0.3% of GDP.
