Pensions: the budget slows the increases of those who have stopped working to pay for early exit for those still in work
5 November 2026, 16:13
Every January pensions rise by as much as the cost of living went up in the previous year, as measured by Istat. The increase, however, is calculated in bands: it is full on the part of the payment up to four times the minimum pension, that is up to €2,447 gross a month, and smaller on the part above that figure. Even those who receive more, therefore, get the full adjustment on the first €2,447 and a reduced one only on what lies above. For 2027 Article 55 of the budget bill changes the calculation for pensions above the threshold in two ways: it recognises an even lower share of inflation and applies it to the whole amount, including the first part, which until now rose in line with prices. The budget's technical report expects savings for the State's coffers of €885 million a year for three years, €2.65 billion in all, because the increase lost in 2027 is also missing from the payments of the following years. The estimate, moreover, assumes lower inflation than is already expected for this year: in all likelihood the saving will be larger, and it will be provided by the same people as ever.
In Article 52 of the same bill, three before the one recalculating pensions, the budget sets up a fund of €850 million a year, from 2027 to 2029, for "measures to support exit from the labour market", to be defined by a later act. The most advanced proposal is a new "quota" put forward by the Lega, that is, a combination of age and years of contributions that allows people to retire early: at sixty-four with thirty-six years paid in, for about sixty thousand people according to the undersecretary for Labour. The money taken from millions of pensioners is enough, with a little to spare, to pay for those few tens of thousands to leave: those who have already stopped pay so that others can stop sooner.
The same cut was already used in 2023, when prices were also racing, and the Constitutional Court found it lawful. Taking from pensioners, then, is allowed; and, since it is allowed, it is done again.
Quotas, for their part, are all born temporary. Quota 100 was meant to last three years, from 2019 to 2021; two more have followed it, and now the budget is setting aside the money for what could be the fourth. The first sent fewer than four hundred thousand people into retirement, far fewer than expected, and cost about €23 billion: that is the calculation of INPS and the Parliamentary Budget Office, counting payments already made and those due up to 2025. In Italy, pensions are paid for by the contributions of those working now and, where that is not enough, by the public budget, that is, by everyone's taxes: every early exit removes one contribution and adds one pension, in a country where almost a third of the population is over sixty. Faced with this bill, the budget has chosen the most convenient way, for those who write it, of finding the money: making the next pensioner pay for the previous one.
The fund for leaving early has an expiry date, 2029; the increase taken from those already retired has none.
This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Post on 2 November 2026.