Early Retirement for Workers with a Degree of Disability Greater Than or Equal to 45%

Employees and self-employed workers included in any of the Social Security System schemes who prove:

• Being registered or in a situation equivalent to registration on the date of the causal event.
• That over their working life, they have worked for an effective time equivalent to, at least, the minimum contribution period required for accessing the retirement pension, while being affected by any of the disabilities listed in the following section with a degree of disability greater than or equal to 45 percent.

The disabilities in which there is evidence of a general and appreciable reduction in life expectancy and which could lead to early retirement, are listed in Article 2 of RD 1851/2009, of 4 December, which implements Article 206 of the Consolidated Text of the  LGSS  concerning early retirement of workers with a degree of disability of 45% or over.

The minimum retirement age for workers affected by one of the disabilities listed in the previous section, with a degree of disability greater than or equal to 45%, will be, as an exception, 56 years old (as of 01/01/2012).

To calculate the effective time worked,  all absences from work will be deducted, except for:

• Those which are due to having a medical certificate for a common or occupational illness or an accident, whether work-related or not.
• Those which are due to suspension of the employment contract because of maternity, paternity, adoption, fostering, risk during pregnancy or risk during breastfeeding.
• Absences from work with entitlement to remuneration.

The period of time by which the worker retirement age is reduced, will be counted as an effective contribution period for the sole purpose of determining the percentage to be applied to the corresponding regulatory base to calculate the amount of the retirement pension.

Workers that meet the required conditions to avail themselves of the provisions of RD 1851/2009, of 4 December, which implements article 206 of the Consolidated Text of  the LGSS  concerning the early retirement of workers with a degree of disability of 45% and over, and RD 1539/2003, of 5 December, which sets out retirement age reduction coefficients for workers who prove they have a significant degree of disability, can choose to apply whichever is more favourable to them.