Stand: government reply of 19 October. The number of old-age pensions in payment for people with particularly long insurance records rose from 685,971 at the end of 2016 to 2,889,969 at the end of 2025 – more than fourfold. This comes from the federal government’s answer to a parliamentary question by Die Linke (Drucksache 21/8731), reported by the Bundestag’s news service.
A stock effect, not a boom
The figure sounds like an explosion, but it is mostly a stock effect. The penalty-free pension after 45 contribution years, popularly “retirement at 63”, has been paid since 2014 and is then drawn for decades. New pensioners join every year while very few leave. The government’s table implies a net increase of roughly 233,000 to 258,000 pensions a year (our calculation); in 2025 it was 233,000, the lowest in the series.
More relevant for the reform debate is the share of new pensions. It stood at 28.7 per cent in 2016, peaked at 31.3 per cent in 2021 and fell to 28.3 per cent in 2025. Men use the rule far more often than women: 32.4 against 24.5 per cent. Regional gaps are large but narrowing: in Thuringia the share fell from 40.6 to 34.1 per cent, in Saxony from 39.5 to 33.3 per cent; in Bavaria it barely moved (30.2 per cent), and in West Berlin it is 16.9 per cent.
Who gains, who pays
The income side is just as revealing. The pension commission, which presented 33 recommendations in June, justifies ending the penalty-free route partly by saying it mainly benefits higher earners, healthier people and men. The government’s reply supports that only in part: of those who retired in 2025, 16.4 per cent receive less than €1,200 a month – 28.2 per cent of women and 6.9 per cent of men. So people with small pensions use the rule too, but the split between the sexes is uneven. Elsewhere in the same reply the government itself cautions against equating pension size with poverty, because household income is missing from the picture.
On the consequences of abolition the government says little. These depend “on the exact design”, it says, and cannot be anticipated; on transition periods and protection of legitimate expectations it says nothing because legislation is under way. It is “currently drafting the legislative implementation” of the commission’s recommendations. For scale: the pension insurer puts the cost of the penalty-free option at about €13 billion a year, and DIW president Marcel Fratzscher estimates the long-term saving from abolition at around €10 billion (dpa/t-online, August).
Our assessment: the numbers give both camps ammunition and do not settle the argument. Those who want abolition find €13 billion and a male skew; those who want to keep the rule find a falling share, no boom, and many recipients on middling pensions. A compromise of the kind Labour Minister Alexander Schweitzer (SPD) is seeking – for instance on how care and childcare periods count, an idea being discussed in the Union – looks likelier than outright abolition – not least because CDU state premiers in eastern Germany also object. That is far from certain: there is still no draft bill.
Earlier coverage: Retire at 63? New labour minister seeks a deal and Verdi chief demands pension bill.
Sources: Bundestag, Drucksache 21/8731, heute im bundestag, t-online/dpa, Rheinpfalz via Leinetal24
