Voluntary early retirement

From 17/03/2013 onwards, this new form of early retirement is applicable to causal events occurring after that date, with the exception of cases in which temporary provision four, section 5 of the LGSS is applicable.

Beneficiaries/ requirements

Workers included in any of the Social Security system schemes that meet the following requirements may access this type of early retirement:

Being no more than two years younger than the age requirement applicable in each case, without these conditions resulting in the application of age reductions that workers in certain occupational sectors may enjoy as a result of performing particularly distressing, toxic, dangerous or unhealthy work, or as regards persons with a degree of disability between 45% and 65%.
Being registered or in a situation equivalent to registration.
They are able to demonstrate that they have made contributions for at least:
- 35 years, without taking into account, for these purposes, the proportional amount of the extra payments or the payment of years and days of contributions for contributions prior to 01-01-1967. For this exclusive purpose, only the period of compulsory military service or the replacement social service or the compulsory social service for women will be counted, with a maximum limit of one year.
- At least two years of the contribution period must have been within the 15 years immediately prior to earning the entitlement or at the moment when the contribution obligation terminated, if the early retirement pension is applied while affiliated or assimilated to inscription without the requirement to pay contributions.
- In the case of workers included in the special System for employed agricultural workers, for the purposes of accrediting the minimum period of effective contributions (35 years), at least 6 of the last 10 years of contributions must correspond to periods of effective work in this special system. To this end, periods during which contributory unemployment benefits were received under this special system will also be counted.
- In the case of part-time workers, in order to accredit the minimum contribution period of 35 years, the rules established in article 247 of the revised text of the General Law on Social Security, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 8/2015, of 30 October, shall be applied.
Once proof that the general and specific requirements have been met is submitted, the receivable pension amount must be greater than the minimum pension amount that corresponded to the interested party given his/her family situation when turning 65. Otherwise, it will not be possible for him/her to access this type of early retirement.

Amount

The amount of the pension resulting from applying to the base rate the general percentage corresponding to the months that contributions were made will be reduced by applying, for each month or fraction of a month, the time the worker has still to work to reach the legal retirement age at the time of the causal event, which in each case results from the application of the coefficients calculated using the table of reduction coefficients, depending on the accredited contribution period and the months in advance.

With the sole purpose of establishing the aforementioned legal retirement age, this will be considered as the age the worker would have reached had they continued making contributions during the period between the causal event and reaching the legal retirement age applicable in each case.

To calculate the contribution periods, only complete periods will be considered, with fractions of periods not being considered as equal thereto.

When at the time of taking this type of retirement the worker is receiving unemployment benefit and has done so for at least 3 months, the reduction coefficients foreseen for early retirement for reasons not attributable to the worker shall be applicable, although the requirements for access to early retirement of their own free will set out in this section shall apply.

Limits of amounts:

Having applied the aforementioned reduction coefficients, the resulting amount of the pension may not exceed the amount resulting from reducing the maximum pension limit by 0.50% for each quarter or fraction of a quarter taken early.
The coefficient of 0.50% referred to in the previous paragraph shall not apply in the following cases:

For retirement taken under the provisions of section 1, point 2 of the fourth transitory provision of the General Law on Social Security.
For early retirement as regards occupational groups or professional activities involving particularly distressing, toxic, dangerous or unhealthy work, or as regards persons with disabilities.

PENSION SUPPLEMENT FOR PENSIONS PAID BETWEEN 1-1-2002 AND 31-12-2021

With effect from 1-3-2022, beneficiaries of voluntary early retirement pensions paid between 1-1-2002 and 31-12-2021 are entitled to a supplement, the amount of which is equal to the difference between the amount of the pension initially calculated and the amount resulting from applying to the initial pension the reduction coefficients in force from 1-1-2022. The following conditions must be met:

At least 44 years and 6 months of contributions, or 40 years of contributions if the amount of the pension is less than 900 euros on 1-1-2022.
That the amount of the initial pension would have been higher if the reduction coefficients in force on 1-1-2022 had been applied.

The supplement, which will form part of the pension for all purposes and will be paid in 14 instalments, will be automatically recognised in the first quarter of 2022.

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