The Government is preparing a legal change to unblock the partial retirement of staff in public administrations, a retirement modality that was paralyzed by the difficulties in filling these positions through a relief contract. With this change, the measure would allow the temporary relievers to be recovered while the positions are filled definitively, according to the unions.
Although the measure has not yet been approved, the movement is already underway. CSIF assures that the Government plans to unblock this right “imminently” through a royal Decree-Law. Emphasize that the problem affects the workforce of public administrations, not civil servants in general, and this has been dragging on since the last partial retirement reform.
Partial retirement allows you to reduce your working hours and start collecting a part of your pension before definitive retirement. To understand it better, one person continues working, but for fewer hours, while the other covers the remaining part through a “relief contract.” This system was common in many administrations, but became complicated when the new regulation tightened the conditions of the reliever.
Why was this modality blocked?
The root of the problem is in the reform approved at the end of 2024 and later applied to partial retirement. The Social security explains that, when partial retirement occurs before the ordinary age, the replacement contract must be indefinite and full-time, in addition to being maintained for at least two years after the total retirement of the person relieved.
This requirement fits with a private company, but clashes with the logic of public employment. The Secretary of State for Public Function established a guiding criterion in 2025 according to which these replacement contracts must be fixed in nature in the administrations and respect the principles of equality, merit and capacity. That’s where the traffic jam began, because hiring permanent staff in the public sector requires a selection process that usually takes months, and even years.
Who would benefit and what remains to be closed?
The solution being negotiated now is to allow temporary hiring of relievers on a temporary basis, at least for the workforce. According to CSIF, this route has already been raised in the negotiation of the IV Single Agreement of the General Administration of the State and could be activated shortly. Other union organizations have also indicated that the change would serve to unblock thousands of files that are still stopped.
However, the measure would not resolve for now the situation of civil servant and statutory personnel, who still do not fully recover this modality of partial retirement. This debate continues to be linked to the future Public Service Law, whose parliamentary processing remains stuck.
The consequence for those who are pending to request it is that the partial retirement of workforce is still not applied normally, although the Government is already working on a legal change to make it viable. The next step will be to check if this royal decree law is finally approved and under what conditions it will be applied in each administration.