Talking Europe speaks to the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit. With anger growing in France about the government's push to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and the EU facing an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, his portfolio is very much in the spotlight – including recommendations to encourage a Minimum Income for all.
"The pension age cannot be the same for everybody […] There has to be a criteria of hardship taken into account." For Schmit, the French government's reforms to the pension age cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution. The EU's Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights said any raising of the retirement age must go hand-in-hand with programmes to ensure that people at the end of their careers do have realistic employment opportunities. "If you want people to work longer, you have to prepare them to work longer. That’s about working conditions, investing in their skills, they might evolve and change the way they work. If you consider that someone might work the same way when they are 20 as when they are 64, then this is not realistic."
