Madrid, December 18, 2024.- The Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López, the Secretary General of UGT Public Services, Julio Lacora, and the Coordinator of Public Area of CCOO, Luciano Palazzo, have signed on Wednesday an agreement by which they agree to recover the right to partial retirement of public employees. The compromise reached will be concretized by modifying the Consolidated Text of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee (TREBEP).

Partial retirement is a form of retirement that makes it possible to combine a part-time work performance with the receipt of part of the pension, and that can be linked to a relief carried out by another worker.

“With this agreement we regained a suppressed right with the adjustment and austerity measures adopted by the previous government in 2012, while eliminating an unjustified asymmetry with workers in the private sector. It is also a question of promoting the transfer of knowledge in the public sector among the oldest workers and the new generations,” said the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, during the signing of the agreement.

The possibility of partial retirement of civil servants, provided for in Article 67 of the TREBEP, was abolished as part of the adjustment and austerity measures. This agreement fulfils one of the commitments contained in the Framework Agreement for a 21st Century Administration, signed with the same unions in 2022. Reintegrating this figure into the public sector will make it possible, as in the private sector, to facilitate the transition between active life and retirement and to guarantee the transfer of knowledge between generations.

The agreement provides that partial retirement in the public sector is in accordance with the provisions “in the legislation of Social Security and Passive Classes, with the precise regulatory adaptations”; in this sense, the reference is the new regulatory framework of partial retirement agreed in the Social Dialogue Table by the Government, the business organizations CEOE and CEPYME and the trade unions UGT and CCOO on July 31, 2024.

Relievers will be career officials

The agreement provides that, in the case of the public sector, the figure of the “reliever” will be regulated as career civil servants, and the corresponding places must therefore be provided in the offers of public employment or equivalent planning instruments of the year in which the retirement will occur. Since these positions are planned, it is guaranteed that this retirement formula does not generate additional budgetary costs.

The signatories have committed themselves to immediately transfer the contents of the agreement to the General Negotiating Table of the Public Administrations to begin the process of modifying the regulations.