Communists and other working-class movements in the Czech Republic have intensified their campaign against the Petr Fiala-led government’s plan to increase the retirement age in the country. Last week, the leadership of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) submitted a petition to the Petition Committee of the Chamber of Deputies protesting the raising of the retirement age to 68 years. The committee will discuss the petition on April 25 and decide on a date for a public hearing on the petition.
KSCM launched its online petition against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age on February 20. In the last week of March, a protest took place in the capital Prague, organized by the opposition parties including the KSCM and trade unions like OS KOVO.
The retirement age in the Czech Republic is dependent on the year of birth of employees, their gender, and the number of children they have (for women). For people born in 1936 and earlier, retirement is at 60 years for men and 53-57 years for women. For those born between 1936 and 1971, the retirement age for men ranges between 62 to 65 years, and for women between 55 years and 8 months to 65 years (depending on the number of children raised). For people who were born after 1971, the retirement age is uniform at 65.
According to reports, the conservative coalition government envisages pension reforms to ‘fix’ the holes in the country’s budget, similar to French President Emmanuel Macron increasing the retirement age in France from 62 to 64. As per the tentative plan formulated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs headed by Marian Jurečka in February this year, the retirement age will be raised to 68 for people currently under the age of 34, while people now in their 50s would retire at 66, and those in their 40s at 67.
Opponents of the reform note that if the retirement age is increased, the Czech Republic will become the country with the highest retirement age in Europe. In its petition ‘Stop 68’, the KSCM, citing data from Eurostat, stated that the average age that a person lives in good health in the Czech Republic is 62.5 years for women and 60.9 years for men.
Through the reforms, the government expects to save up to 0.3% of the annual GDP, or CZK 20 billion (US$ 0.94 billion). In the Czech Republic, pensions are indexed with inflation rates. Last year witnessed three rounds of pension increase due to the soaring inflation rates. By the end of January 2023, the average old-age pension in the country had reached CZK 19,438 (US$ 909), and was projected to increase by an additional CZK 1,770 (US$ 82.82) by June 2023. However, the government slashed this amount to CZK 760 (US$ 35.56) through a parliamentary vote in March.
Currently, massive protests are raging across France against Macron’s pension reform. In the Czech Republic, people have been protesting the cost of living crisis marked by high energy prices and rising inflation (16.72% in February 2023), while the government has been supporting the war efforts in Ukraine. Czech communists and the Czech Peace Movement (CMH) have organized several mobilizations against the government’s decision to provide Ukraine with armaments and support NATO’s maneuvers.
Meanwhile, even though the average monthly electricity wholesale price in the country has reduced from the peak crisis levels (476.73 euros/US$ 522.31 per kilowatt-hour in August 2022 to 134.81 euros/US$ 147.70 per kilowatt-hour in January 2023), it must be noted that the price was only 56.16 euros/US$ 61.53 in January 2021.
Roman Roun, representative of the petition committee and media representative of the KSCM, had stated in the first week of April, “In its program statement of January 2022, the anti-social right-wing government of Petr Fiala promised to submit a pension reform proposal by the end of 2023. But it has not yet even outlined the basic outlines of what the reform should look like. It does not discuss this issue openly with the opposition or social partners. That is why we have decided to call on citizens to give their signatures on this matter, which government representatives speak about in a rather contradictory way in the media.”
*With inputs from Lubos Petricek, former chairman of the Prague Young Communist (MK) Commission of KSCM.
