(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) >Some 57% of Swiss are against raising the retirement age to 67, as suggested by lawmakers looking to reform national pension policy.
Of the 13,000 people polled earlier this month, 27% were in favour of setting the retirement age to 67. The remaining 16% said they were unsure. Publishing company Tamedia commissioned the survey, and the results appeared in Sunday newspapers SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche.
The current retirement age in Switzerland is 65 for men and 64 for women. Now parliamentarians are looking into an emergency plan to gradually raise the age to 67 for both sexes in order to generate more pension funds. The plan would only come into play if funds slipped below a certain level, and it would have to be approved by the Swiss in a national vote.
Among those surveyed for Tamedia, supporters of the conservative right Swiss People’s Party were especially against the idea of a later retirement – with 68% saying “no”. In comparison, 50% of centre-right Radical Party supporters were in favour of the concept.
“Resistance to even a gentle method of raising the retirement age is surprisingly strong,” said Zurich political scientist Fabio Wasserfallen, who led the survey.
As Interior Minister Alain Berset told the newspapers, “linking the financial situation of AHV [the state pension scheme] to an increase in retirement age would be the death sentence for the bill”.