Why Denmark raised the retirement age to 70 – and how Europe compares

Denmark's retirement age is to increase to 70 – Europe's highest – after its parliament adopted a law continuing the country's 'sliding scale' approach to the pension threshold. 

Since 2006, Denmark has monitored life expectancy and accordingly revised the official retirement age every five years, well in advance. 

It is currently 67 but will rise to 68 in 2030 and to 69 in 2035 – and now to 70 from 2040. The new retirement age will only apply to people born after December 31, 1970. 

The new law passed on Thursday with 81 votes for and 21 votes against. However, the sliding scale mechanism may be under threat after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expressed doubts last year.

"We no longer believe that the retirement age should be increased automatically," she said, adding that her Social Democrat party believed "you can't just keep saying that people have to work a year longer."

Why retirement is a political hot-button issue

Popular opposition to raising the retirement age has dogged governments around Europe in recent years. Europe's ageing demographics mean there are more and more senior citizens to support, ratcheting up the welfare burden on countries. 

In turn, governments are increasingly aware of the 'gray vote' bloc, especially when opposition parties can easily harness public anger by targeting social-media users by age range. 

With controversy over the topic often crossing political divides, pension reforms have sparked protests and riots – and can even bring down a government. 

In 2023, a French law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 prompted several days of strikes and demonstrations. And in 2024, when French Prime Minister Michel Barnier forced through a budget reforming social security, left-wing and right-wing parties combined to oust him with a vote of no confidence. 

Retirement ages around Europe

The ages at which people can pick up a government pension varies wildly between, and even within, countries. Many have begun to add staged delays to the retirement age, as per the Danish model, and there are further complications.

Some countries have sliding scales of retirement ages dependent on the amount of insurance coverage or income-taxed payments into the national pension budget. Some make distinctions between employment types, with 'blue-collar' physical workers retiring at a different time to 'white-collar' clerical professionals. 

And some – although not all – countries are still wrestling with equality between the sexes. Among the nations which have traditionally had earlier retirement for women, some are now seeking to equalize the gender gap – usually through raising the female qualification bar, rather than giving men an earlier finish – but some have different provisions for women who have had children. 

In this context, it's worth noting that the new Danish 'retirement age' of 70 only applies to people born in 1971 or later. But as it stands right now, that is Europe's highest retirement age. 

The UK recently announced a new age limit of 68 – although it will only come into effect between 2044 and 2046, for those born since April 4, 1977. 

Many European countries cluster around a current or planned retirement age of 67, with Belgium, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden at that mark – and in 2028 the Netherlands will tweak that up to 67 years and three months, matching Portugal. 

France still has an upper limit of 66 – perhaps not surprisingly after all that political upheaval – while there are a host of countries at 65 including Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

For the lowest (maximum) retirement ages in Europe, you have to head west. Moldovans retire at 63, as do Belarusian men. And that's still longer in work than the continent's lowest maximum retirement age, of 60… in Ukraine.