October 2025
17Oct

French PM survives no-confidence votes after making pension concession

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu survived two no-confidence votes in parliament on Thursday, winning crucial backing from the Socialist Party thanks to his pledge to suspend President Emmanuel Macron’s contested pension reform. The two motions presented by the hard-left France Unbowed and the far-right National Rally (RN) secured just 271 and 144 votes respectively — well short of the 289 votes needed to bring down Lecornu’s days-old government. Lecornu’s offer to mothball the pension reform until after the 2027 presidential election...

October 17, 2025
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16Oct

UK. Savers back pension reforms despite cost-of-living strains

Despite the cost-of-living strain, most savers are continuing to save into their pension, research from Pensions UK has found, with 4 per cent of savers having reduced pension contributions. The research showed that many are struggling, as 44 per cent of people say their financial situation is worse than 12 months ago, up from 34 per cent in 2024. As a result, many are cutting back on everyday spending, including eating out (39 per cent), takeaways (35 per cent), holidays (32...

October 16, 2025
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16Oct

Why Europe can’t face its pension black hole

France's political standoff shows how European governments, caught between the demands of their ageing electorates and the need to keep spending in check, keep struggling to fix the pension-shaped holes in their budgets. The right to a pension has been a central plank of the European social contract for decades. But longer life spans and fewer births mean most governments can't afford to have people retiring on a full pension in their early 60s, as was once the norm. The Week...

October 16, 2025
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15Oct

French PM backs freezing Macron’s pension reform to save government

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has told parliament he backs suspending controversial 2023 pension reforms, in the face of crucial votes of no-confidence later this week. The changes, which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, were seen as signature reforms in Emmanuel Macron's presidency. "This autumn I will propose to parliament that we suspend the 2023 pension reform until the [2027] presidential election," Lecornu said to applause from left-wing parties. Lecornu was reappointed prime minister last week only four days...

October 15, 2025
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09Oct

Modifying pension reform would be very costly for France, says finance minister

Any plans to modify France's pension reforms - whose unpopularity is one of the reasons behind the country's political crisis - would be very costly for the economy, said acting French finance minister Roland Lescure on Wednesday. "Modifying the pension reform will cost hundreds of millions in 2026, and billions in 2027," Lescure told France Inter radio. Elisabeth Borne, a former Prime Minister and the country's current caretaker education minister, told Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday that she was open to suspending the pension overhaul...

October 9, 2025
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07Oct

UK. Six key challenges for the revived Pensions Commission

Aon has warned that the government’s revived Pensions Commission will face major structural hurdles if it hopes to deliver meaningful reform to the UK’s pension system. In a new paper exploring the aims of the Pensions Commission, Matthew Arends, head of UK retirement policy at Aon, argued that the commission’s narrow remit may stop it from addressing the root causes of poor retirement adequacy. He warned that by being instructed to “build on the foundation of the state pension” rather than...

October 7, 2025
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06Oct

UK. How pension reform is reshaping retirement income

The UK’s retirement market stands once again at the brink of profound change. The FCA’s December 2024 consultation paper – creatively titled CP24/27: Advice Guidance Boundary Review: Proposed Targeted Support Reforms for Pensions – paired with the upcoming Pensions Schemes Bill 2025, represents a regulatory double act poised to transform how retirement income solutions are delivered. This approach represents a critical evolution beyond existing Pension Freedoms (2015) legislation, where retirees frequently struggled with overwhelming choice, leading to premature withdrawals or complete indecision. Guided...

October 6, 2025
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September 2025
22Sep

Germany proposes a solution to the pension crisis: a monthly ‘salary’ for children aged 6 and over

“The welfare state we have today is no longer financially sustainable,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated at a CDU event at the end of August. His remarks follow the government’s agreement to push through a reform of the pension system, aimed at containing the deficit. To address this, Merz proposed incentivizing private savings from an early age as a potential solution. The “Early Start Pension” initiative suggests that children aged six to 18 attending school would receive €10 per month from the German government, which would...

September 22, 2025
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17Sep

Balancing sustainability and social welfare: The controversial 2025 ‘pension age’ reform in Mauritius

The government of Mauritius has amended the National Pensions Act 1976 through Section 39 of the Finance Act 2025 to address rising national debt and ensure the long-term sustainability of the Basic Retirement Pension (BRP). The reform introduces a new definition of 'pension age,' gradually increasing the eligibility age for the BRP from 60 to 65 years over a ten-year period, starting from September 2026. The Income Tax Act has been amended to provide income support to individuals...

September 17, 2025
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15Sep

More than half of UK adults unaware of key pension policy changes

More than half of UK adults (51 per cent) are unaware of upcoming pension policy changes that could have a major impact on their retirement plans, according to new research from Schroders Personal Wealth (SPW). The 2025 SPW Retirement Report, based on a survey of 1,500 UK adults, revealed significant knowledge gaps around shifting pension rules and wider financial planning, with many people still working on assumptions that may no longer hold true. For example, despite 29 per cent of respondents saying...

September 15, 2025
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