On pensions, the ‘Campo Largo’ coalition wants to dismantle the pillars of the Fornero law, just like Salvini

The “abolition of the Fornero reform” has long since ceased to be a priority for the centre-right; not even Matteo Salvini mentions it any more. Yet, in this very parliamentary term, it seems to have become, rather dangerously, a priority for the Broad Coalition.

In recent days, several centre-left politicians, spurred on by the CGIL’s ‘complaint’, have lashed out against the update to the conversion coefficients for the total contributions. Arturo Scotto, a PD MP close to party leader Elly Schlein, even described it as ‘theft’: ‘We will table a parliamentary question’. 

“As the CGIL has denounced, we are facing nothing short of theft: people are leaving work later, but receiving a reduced pension,” said Scotto. “It’s a scandal. We demand that the coefficients be revised immediately.” Tino Magni of AVS echoed this sentiment: “Under the Meloni government, people are retiring later and with a reduced pension. A real masterpiece from those who won workers’ votes on the promise of overturning the Fornero law,” said the senator from Sinistra Italiana. “The automatic increases in the retirement age must be halted and the conversion coefficients must be reviewed immediately.”

Statements from the parties in the ‘Campo Largo’ coalition are following in the wake of the statement in which the CGIL caused a stir: “Retiring later and later and with lower pensions: this is the truth that emerges from the figures”, claims the trade union led by Maurizio Landini, which has drawn up some projections based on the new coefficients just announced by the Ministry of Labour, showing, for example, that a pension worth €1,500 gross per month in 2024 will fall to €1,449.36 in 2027.

But what is this all about? Is the Meloni government really cutting pensions? Transformation coefficients are parameters which, for contributory pensions, convert the total contributions paid by a worker over the course of their career into a pension payment. These coefficients vary according to the worker’s age at retirement (the later one retires, the higher the coefficient) and are determined by certain macroeconomic factors, but above all by demographic ones. Essentially, if people live longer and pensions therefore have to be paid out over more years, then the pension amount must be reduced to keep the system in balance.

The law therefore stipulates that every two years – based on ISTAT’s demographic projections – these coefficients are to be updated: they may increase or decrease, but on the basis of a purely technical estimate. Politics has nothing to do with it. This system, already provided for by the Dini reform on a three-year basis, and subsequently defined on a biennial basis by the Fornero reform to align it with the adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy, aims to ensure that pension expenditure moves in line with major economic and demographic variables in order to maintain the sustainability of the system. Furthermore, the automatic adjustment was designed as a way of removing the ongoing maintenance measures required by a pension system from the realm of political dynamics.

Now the PD is calling for a ‘review of the coefficients’, in other words, to replace a technical decision with an arbitrary political choice. Already last year, the broad coalition – ranging from the M5S to IV – was united in calling for a freeze on the adjustment of pension eligibility criteria to life expectancy, the other automatic mechanism that keeps pensions in balance. The Meloni government has culpably reduced the increase forecast by Istat by two months, at a cost of 1.6 billion. However, the centre-left is proposing a total freeze on the adjustment, which has an initial cost of 3.3 billion, rising over time. Questioning both the adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy and the transformation coefficients amounts to dismantling the two pillars on which the pension system rests. Salvini’s agenda has shifted toward the broader political spectrum, under the name ‘Landini’s agenda’.