Lauri Lepik, the professor of social policy in Tallinn University thinks that people should be allowed to choose when to retire.

People should be allowed to choose when to retire

Lepik told in the ETV morning programme Terevisoon that Estonian retirement system should be more flexible, said ERR news. “People should be allowed to choose when to retire, but in that case the own responsibility about the size of the pension sum would grow,” said Lepik.

“Several European countries have imposed a pension system by which medium life expectancy is taken into account for calculating the size of the pension sum. People should be allowed to work longer when the population is aging,” explained Lepik even if he also added that the retirement age could be raised with a political decision as well.

Last week the Government accepted the Estonian competition plan for 2009-2011, according to which the Estonians’ retirement age is planned to be raised by the year 2024 to the age of 65.