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Germans may have to postpone their retirement parties

Seeking ways to boost Germany's lackluster economy, the country's economy minister said in remarks released Saturday that Germans should only retire when they reach the age of 67.

A panel of experts last month recommended raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 to shore up the country's creaking pension system.

"I suspect [the experts] are right and we should go this way," economy and labor minister Wolfgang Clement was quoted as saying in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

"I cannot imagine that we will in future spend only a third of our expected life in work," Clement said.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is pushing wide-ranging reforms of Germany's generous welfare state in a bid to shake the economy out of a third year of stagnation and reduce unemployment that has risen to over 10 percent.

Schroeder has said Germans need to work until they are older -- many actually retire in their late 50s and the average retirement age is 60.

But with opposition running through both government and opposition parties as well as organized labor, Clement is the most senior Schroeder aide so far to openly back raising the official retirement age to 67.

Clement said longer life expectancy meant people didn't need to retire until later, and singled out the country's teachers for being too quick to leave their profession.

"My impression is that many leave much too early, in teaching for instance at 56, 57 or 58," he said.

"I don't have the impression that they are all exhausted, but rather that there is sometimes a lack of motivation, while in industry there is a lack of jobs. We have to change both," he said.

The panel chaired by economist Bert Ruerup recommended gradually raising the age at which people can retire from the national system with full benefits to 67 by 2035.

Schroeder has said the government will study the panel's report and present its own proposals in the fall.
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