Partial retirement

Partial retirement is a type of retirement that starts before you reach the standard retirement age, whereby you continue to perform a part of your professional activities.

Partial retirement can have two modalities: With a relief contract (the company must hire another worker to complete the hours of the partially retired worker) or without a relief contract. It is also possible to combine your retirement pension with a part-time activity once you retire, which is known as flexible retirement.

In general, the resulting working day of the worker who wishes to partially retire is reduced by between 25% and 50%.

Partially retired workers receive a pension based on the reduction of working hours. Likewise, their income reflects the number of hours worked.

When a partial retirement becomes full retirement, the pension amount is recalculated to take into account the payments made during the worker's partial retirement.

To calculate the regulatory base of the pension, the contribution bases for the period of part-time work as a partially retired worker are taken into account. These bases correspond with 100% of the amount that would have been paid had the person continued to work full time.

The pension would not be reduced with the reductive coefficients as the person will have retired prior to the ordinary age of retirement (65 years and 4 months in 2016); these coefficients would be applied with early retirement (full).

To make the partial retirement effective, the following conditions need to be met:

• Have a full-time contract.
• Have been with the company for at least 6 years.
• The reduction of the working day must be between 25% and 50%, and can be up to 75% if the relief person taken on is contracted on a full-time basis and with an indefinite contract.
• Have a contribution period of a minimum of 33 years. 
  

The relief contract must be formalised with an unemployed person, or who was working in the same company on a temporary contract, or, at least, for the amount of time until the substituted person reaches ordinary retirement age.