The right to early retirement is the government’s great prestige project.
She is pulled out of the figure-hugging black jacket she wore behind the podium for the press conference while presenting her prestige project: A Right to Early Retirement.
Instead, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is wearing a screaming yellow vest and a blue hairnet, which she walks around at Hatting’s bakery in Horsens.
Here are some of the ones that Mette Frederiksen has had in mind with her proposal for early retirement.
We are in a workplace where there is a good senior scheme, and where you also make sure to organize the work so that it loads as little as possible. It’s really good, and when I talk to the staff here, there are many who say it may well be that they will keep going.
– But, says the Prime Minister.
– Many of those I have had time to talk to have worked for many years.
And precisely the number of years in the labor market is absolutely central to the proposal she has presented today.
I know Danish employees well enough that if people can stay in the labor market , then they will stay. The vast majority would like to go to work.
But that is not necessarily fair, she believes.
– Basically, this is about dignity and justice. When you have worked for many years and done what you were supposed to, you must also be able to retire with dignity , says Mette Frederiksen.
‘I’m not in pain myself’
If you have worked for more than 42 years as a 61-year-old, you are allowed by the government ‘s proposal to retire earlier without having to go to a doctor or a municipal caseworker first.
However, the benefit will be less – and the scheme will thus be less attractive if you yourself have saved more than two million up in retirement.
According to the government’s calculations, around 38,000 Danes will have the right to withdraw early with the government’s model – slightly fewer are expected to make use of it.
But that does not change the fact that there is a need for it, states Mette Frederiksen – and not just to draw more voters in the direction of the Social Democrats.
– These are worn-out people, she says and gestures towards the bands behind her.
– There was one of the employees who said: ‘You know how it is. We are all in pain ‘, says Mette Frederiksen.
