Poland's minister of equality: the current goverment has no plan of equalizing the retirement age for men and women.

Translation: Minister for Equality Katarzyna Kotula said on Monday on RMF FM that the unequal retirement age for women and men is discrimination, so we need to consider how to solve this issue.

She added that the goverment is not planning any changes in this regard, but – as she said – her actions and those of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy in the coming years will focus on rebuilding the pension system.

This topic will probably come back in a few years and we will have to consider, in the face of demographic changes, how this issue should be resolved and in which direction the retirement age should be equalized, Kotula added.

Government work on pension regulations In December 2023, the parlament received a government bill providing that a seniority pension would be available, regardless of age, to people with a contribution period of at least 38 years for women and 43 years for men.

The project – as indicated in the justification – is the implementation of the government's commitment from 7 June 2023, when Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki signed an agreement with NSZZ "Solidarność". In the opinion of the applicants, the proposed solutions, on the one hand, respond to justified social expectations, and on the other, take into account the possibilities that the pension system has and will have.

The current pension system makes the right to a pension dependent on the insured person reaching the appropriate age – 60 for women and 65 for men, which means that every person who was subject to pension insurance acquires the right to a pension upon reaching this age. Its amount is influenced by the length of the period of paying contributions to pension insurance. The minimum pension is, as a rule, granted to women with a contributory and non-contributory period of at least 20 years and to men with at least 25 years of such a period.