European retirement ages are forced up after decades of political incompetence

On May 22, Denmark’s parliament passed a law raising the retirement age from its current 67 to 70. Now, as with any government reform, the law comes with caveats, mainly that the age won’t hit 70 until 2040. Instead, it will rise in steps. In what would seem like a surprise twist, the bill passed with overwhelming support, with almost four-fifths of the parliament voting in favour.

Except, it’s not a surprise: it’s just the beginning of what is going to come across the entirety of Europe over the coming decades. 

Flash back to the early 2010s. While all of the West was hit hard by the Great Recession and its long aftermath, one country was hit hardest: Greece. Its financial troubles brought worldwide scrutiny to its relatively low retirement age: you could even retire as early as 55, and some could even retire as early as 50.

This was excessive, and Greece’s quick raising of the retirement age amidst that crisis was evidence of that. However, the average age of retirement in Europe is around 61 (America’s comes three years later, at 64). While 61 is obviously more reasonable than 55, it’s still relatively early, especially when one considers Europe’s inverted population pyramid. There is a bulge around those aged 55, a bulge which represents millions of people who will soon be reaching retirement age. Retirement, of course, means you no longer contribute to pension funds; you take from them instead. But because birth rates are plummeting, there are not enough people to contribute to European pension funds in order to keep them solvent: in the decades to come, there will simply be no money in the funds.

This problem of unsustainability was not an inevitability, and was entirely due to the incompetence of Europe’s political leadership.

After World War II, Europe was essentially left in as close to a paradisical state as humanity can get. It was protected by the United States’ military and nuclear umbrella, which meant it did not need to spend money on defence. Instead, it could throw all of its money into pensions, free health care, free colleges, public transportation, and more. It may have behooved Europe’s political leadership instead to set up systems which could remain solvent in the long-term, but re-election seems to have been too enticing.

This European equilibrium could continue only if nothing changed. Unfortunately for Europe, America elected President Donald Trump eight years ago, who – frustrated with their lack of a desire to defend themselves – began demanding more from the old continent when it came to defence spending. While they have started to act, it has been mostly smoke-and-mirrors; the hard choices – to trade social safety nets for defence spending – were apparently too politically toxic. But now they have to weaken the social safety nets — even though the nets aren’t strong enough to hold everyone who needs them.

Bizarrely, in the mid-2010s European leadership seemed to have thought they found a solution: replace the aging native population with mass migration. This has been derided as the “Great Replacement conspiracy theory” by many on the Left and in the press: “Of course there is no plan by establishment leaders to replace their aging populations with migration. Why would you think that?”

Except there is, and we know because they have said it openly and repeatedly. Here’s Angela Merkel – the architect of Europe’s migrant crisis – in 2024: “[Germany’s] lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.” And here’s her successor, Olaf Scholz: “Germany is an immigration country. It’s high time we understand ourselves.”

The bizarre thing about slandering the above as “a conspiracy theory” is that it entirely is in line with what globalists have long desired: a truly global and free market economy, where everything is cheap thanks to an endless supply of low-cost labour. 

However, many European populations did not want this. The migrant crisis, on the back of the lingering Great Recession, triggered a massive populist wave which swept from Warsaw to Washington (and just this week, back to Warsaw). Voters in Central Europe reacted to the sudden influx of mass migrants by throwing their support to populist parties. Last year, Austria’s Herbert Kickl came in first place in his country’s elections, and the German AfD is now ranking as the country’s most popular party. In 2022, Italians elected Giorgia Meloni as prime minister, who campaigned on a promise to eject illegal migrants.

The problem for establishmentarians is that this would be enough for them to lose power (indeed, in many places, it already is proving so). But the incoming time bomb of necessary pension reform – raising pensions and, likely, making pay outs smaller – is probably going to wreck the political chances of the establishment parties which have as-of-yet survived the populist wave.

Perhaps they will hope that the bomb goes off while the populists are in charge, allowing the establishment to cast blame on them. But even that hope may be in vain. Populists like Javier Milei in Argentina have bee elected specifically on the promise of fixing establishment failures – and so far, he is proving to be a success.

The tragedy of all this is that, again, it did not need to happen. European leaders did not need to be like kids in a candy shop with their parent’s credit card, buying endlessly and eating ceaselessly. But that’s what they did. Now the stomach ache is coming – and it’s going to be a bad one.