PRAGUE - The Czech Social Security Administration (ČSSZ) received more applications for early retirement this year by mid-September than in the whole of last year. In total, there were over 86,400 applications. It is also almost three times more than last year. About 30,000 people have applied for an early pension in 2021. That's according to figures released by the authority. Interest in early pensions picked up significantly last autumn after the Department of Labour highlighted their benefits. Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL), the ministry's head, and František Boháček, the director of the Czech Social Security Agency, have repeated several times recently that last year's favourable situation will not be repeated this year. From October, the rules will become even stricter.

Last year, the Social Administration received no more than 4 700 applications for early retirement in a month. The total number of applicants received in 2021 was 30,006. Last year until autumn, the monthly number of applicants ranged from 2,400 to 4,100. In mid-October last year, the Ministry of Labour announced that the early pension could be several hundred to a thousand crowns higher than the regular new pension this year, despite cuts due to extraordinary anti-inflationary indexations. Last year, some 16,950 applications were received in October, nearly 24,700 in November and over 13,000 in December. Interest in early pension continued this year. The lowest number of applications was in January, at around 5,000. In February the number approached 9,200 and then rose into the summer. In May it reached around 12 900. In June and July it fell below the 10,000 mark. It then peaked in August, before the originally planned tightening of conditions in September, when 13 400 people applied.

President Petr Pavel signed the pension amendment in early September. The stricter rules will therefore come into force in October. People before retirement have one more month to submit their applications. In September, 4137 people had taken advantage of this by the middle of the month.

"Early retirement is not a bargain. It may have been potentially advantageous at the end of last year under certain conditions for a certain group of clients, but it is no longer," the director of the Czech Social Security Agency told the Czech Press Agency.

(CTK/Zro)