The General State Administration and the unions have closed the new procedure so that permanent employees can access partial retirement and early partial retirement, a path that had been pending adaptation after the latest legal changes.
The agreement, signed within the scope of the IV Single Agreement, opens the door to reactivating this retirement modality in the AGE and confirms one of the measures most anticipated by the workforce, the possibility of accumulating in a single period all the remaining working time until reaching the ordinary retirement age. The text also establishes that only those who are full-time permanent employees and meet the required legal requirements will be able to benefit from this system.
The novelty comes after the reform introduced by Royal Decree-Law 11/2024, which as of April 1, 2025 requires that, when there is early partial retirement, the replacement be covered with a full-time contract and with the particularities of public employment. The draft also recalls that, after this change, the Secretary of State for Public Service approved guiding criteria for the hiring of relief personnel and that later a specific replacement rate was promoted to address these retirements within the scope of the agreement.
What changes for workers
The agreement establishes that partial retirement will imply a modification of the initial contract, which will go from full-time to part-time, with the corresponding reduction in working hours and salary according to the chosen percentage. Even so, the worker will continue in the same position and with the same professional category until full retirement, unless there are restructuring or closures of centers. During that time you will not be able to participate in voluntary mobility processes or in procedures to go from labor personnel to career civil servants.
One of the points with the most practical impact is the accumulation of working time. The rule allows the reduced working day to be concentrated on specific days of the week, weeks of the month, months of the year or, if it is early partial retirement, in a single block that covers the entire remaining period until ordinary retirement. The agreement expressly emphasizes that this use may not be limited or prevented in any area.
Homogeneous sections of reduced working hours are also established. In the table included in the draft, different percentages appear for weekly work days of 35 and 37.5 hours, with reductions that reach up to 74% in the first case and 75% in the second. Furthermore, when the anticipation is greater than two years, the first tranche will be applied during that initial period and, upon entering the two years prior to the ordinary age, the chosen reduction may be modified only once. The table appears on pages 3 and 4 of the draft.
How applications will be processed
The final procedure will be regulated by a resolution of the Secretary of State for Public Function, which must include the official application form. This form will have to be submitted to the personnel body of the destination ministry or agency at least three months in advance of the scheduled date for partial retirement. The agreement adds that, in the case of files already started with the previous system and not resolved for reasons beyond the control of the applicant, the date of that first request must be stated.
The text also incorporates a priority criterion in the event that not all requests can be met with the available permanent contracts. In this case, it will be taken into account, on the one hand, the date on which the application was submitted in accordance with the previous procedure and, on the other, the date on which the requirements to access partial retirement are met. The Administration also undertakes to provide the information necessary to process these files and to prepare a practical guide to make the process understandable.
Another relevant element is the protection of the relieved worker. If the replacement contract expires before the legal term, the Administration will have to formalize a new one under the same terms. This termination will not in any case mean the reinstatement of the partial retiree on a full-time basis or an increase in their working hours.
The agreement bears the signature of the Administration and UGT, CCOO, CSIF and CIG in the draft provided by the user, and leaves pending the publication of the resolution that specifies the management of the procedure. In the absence of this last step, the pact clears the general framework and provides a long-awaited solution to a retirement formula that the union considers already practically resolved for labor personnel, while its extension to civil servant and statutory personnel is still pending.