HC Deb 06 March 1978 vol 945 cc472-3W
Mr. Lomas

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report the retirement age for men in all the EEC countries, giving at the same time the percentage of the pension related to the average wage.

Mr. Orme

Normal pension age for men is 67 in Denmark, 65 in Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Irish Republic, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and 60 in France and Italy. There are, however, varying provisions enabling men in some countries to receive a pension in advance of the normal pension age or to defer retirement and qualify for an augmented pension later.

It is not possible to express the amount of pension payable in each country as a percentage of an average wage, since individual entitlement normally varies according to the person's earnings, the duration of his insurance and the movement of earnings generally, and there are no uniform statistics of average earnings. The normal method of calculating pensions in each member State is set out in the EEC publication "Comparative Tables of the Social Security Systems ", a copy of which is in the Library.