THE HAGUE, 15/10/09 - The government parties want to raise the state pension (AOW) age from 65 to 66 in 2020. Between 2020 and 2026, a further increase to 67 would follow, under a draft agreement.

The Christian democrats (CDA), Labour (PvdA) and small Christian party ChristenUnie were close to agreement yesterday. They want to present a cabinet decision tomorrow.

According to sources involved in the talks, the AOW age will first go up to 66 in one go from 2020. Everyone aged 55 or older on 1 January 2010 will be exempted.

The age will then go up to 67 in 2026. The most likely variant is a step-by-step increase by two months a year between 2020 and 2026. But making the step from 66 to 67 in one go is also still being considered.

Employees who have worked for 40 or 45 years would retain the right to stop work at age 65. But they would then receive a pension which was 5 to 8 percent lower. This cut is intended as a spur to increasing labour market participation among older people.

There does not appear to be any list of exemptions for physically-demanding jobs in the offing, for which the AOW age would remain at 65. The coalition does however want companies and unions to further improve labour conditions so that in the future no job at all can still be seen as 'heavy.'

The age at which supplementary pensions start will move up in line with the AOW age. People who stop work at 65 in 2027 will then get less AOW and no supplementary pension for two years.

The Lower House has its autumn recess next week and most party leaders will be going on a working visit to Surinam for a week. The coalition wants to have hammered out an accord before this because the party leaders of the Socialist Party (SP) and Party for Freedom (PVV), Agnes Kant and Geert Wilders, are not going on the trip to Surinam.

The coalition fears that Kant and Wilders, both fierce opponents of a higher pensionable age, could easily dominate the media if the other parties are making jungle safaris in Surinam while no accord has yet been reached. The cabinet therefore wants to definitively confirm the plans tomorrow.

Tomorrow evening, however, an important 'political members council' of the PvdA follows, where the AOW is on the agenda. This party, dramatically down in the polls, could at any moment still make strange moves.