Andrzej Duda signed off on the new regulations at a ceremony in the presidential palace on Wednesday, Polish state news agency reported.
The president was accompanied by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Family and Social Policy Minister Marlena Maląg.
Previously early retirement benefits were available to those who had worked under “special conditions” or “in a special character” for a specific period of time before 1999, according to officials.
The new law extends the right to early retirement to everyone who had worked in such jobs for long enough, and is at least 60 years old in the case of men and 55 in the case of women, the PAP news agency reported.
The law lists a total of 64 jobs, including miners, steelworkers, nuclear-reactor operators, pilots and medical rescue workers, according to officials.
Duda said the signing of the new regulations was “highly significant legally and socially, as well as symbolically.”
He stated: “The new early-pension law restores justice.”
The Polish prime minister said that certain professions “must be entitled to early retirement” in a “fair labour market and economic growth that supports pensions,” the PAP news agency reported.
Morawiecki added the introduction of the new law marked “an extremely important and symbolic day.”
Meanwhile, the family and social policy minister told PAP that the new regulations “make early pensions available to a much bigger group of people.”
Maląg added that the new law “can boost the attractiveness of jobs performed under special conditions and in a special character, because younger employees will become eligible for the early pension.”
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, prezydent.pl