Portugal's Social Security Sustainability Report Lands on the Government's Desk by 30 June, Targeting Early Retirement and the TSU

The expert group charged with mapping the long-term future of Portugal's pension system is due to hand its work to the government by 30 June. The Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Rosário Palma Ramalho, said on 29 June that she expects to receive the report on the sustainability of the Segurança Social (Social Security) "these days," but that it will be made public only "when it seems opportune" — after an internal review and discussions with the social partners and parliament.

The document is the product of a working group led by the economist and Universidade Nova professor Jorge Bravo, set up in early 2025 to propose concrete measures for reforming the system. Its mandate is broad, and the levers it has been asked to examine are exactly the ones that decide when Portuguese workers can retire and how much they pay in while working.

What the report is expected to cover

• The early-retirement regime — widely flagged as the headline issue, including proposals to discourage early exit from the labour market and to index the early-retirement age more tightly to the normal pension age.
• The TSU (Taxa Social Única, the Single Social Tax) — an actuarial review of the global contribution rate, broken down by the different contingencies it funds (old age, sickness, unemployment, parental leave and more).
• Complementary and capitalisation schemes — how a funded, private-savings pillar might sit alongside the state pay-as-you-go system.
• Part-time retirement — arrangements that let workers draw a partial pension while staying partly in employment.

The group was asked to deliver not just recommendations but implementation plans, performance indicators and short-, medium- and long-term targets, drawing on the government's programme, recommendations from the Tribunal de Contas (Court of Auditors) and the previous government's Livro Verde (Green Book) on Social Security.

A delayed report and a cautious minister

The deadline has already slipped once. The group was originally meant to report by the end of January 2026; the minister cited "contingencies" for the move to 30 June. Ramalho has repeatedly described Social Security reform as "very complex" and has not committed to completing it during the current legislative term — a signal that the report will open a debate rather than close one.

Jorge Bravo himself has not been shy about the diagnosis. He has stated bluntly that "the Social Security system is not sustainable" on its current path, while warning that simply lowering the retirement age — a demand pushed hardest by Chega, which has pressed the government for a return to a retirement age of 65 — would be "harmful" both to workers and to the system. For 2026 the normal retirement age is fixed at 66 years and nine months, and the sustainability-factor penalty applied to most early pensions rises to 17.63%, up from 16.9% in 2025.

The surplus paradox

The timing is striking because, on paper, the system has rarely looked healthier. Social Security banked a roughly €2.9 billion surplus in its strongest start to a year in a decade, helped by record employment and by a wave of foreign workers now paying in — immigrants account for almost one in five Segurança Social contributors. The structural worry is not today's cash but tomorrow's demographics: an ageing population and a shrinking working-age base mean the ratio of contributors to pensioners is set to deteriorate for decades. That gap between a comfortable present and a strained future is precisely what Bravo's group was created to address.

What This Means for Expats

• Retirement timing could shift. If the government acts on the early-retirement recommendations, the routes out before the normal age — and the penalties attached to them — may tighten. Anyone planning to draw a Portuguese pension before 66 should watch this closely. Our guide to the pensão antecipada (early-retirement pension) explains today's rules.
• Contributions are on the table. A TSU review could eventually change what employees and the self-employed pay. The standard split today is 11% from the worker and 23.75% from the employer; the self-employed contribute on a quarterly-declared income base.
• A funded pillar may grow. If a capitalisation tier is introduced, private and occupational pension savings become more important — relevant for higher earners and for anyone who will not build a full Portuguese contribution record.
• EU pension rights still aggregate. Years worked elsewhere in the EU continue to count toward a Portuguese pension under coordination rules; reform of the domestic system does not erase those rights.
• Retirees on fixed incomes should note the low-income supports. Pensioners with thin Portuguese records can stack the Complemento Solidário para Idosos (CSI) on top of a small pension; those moving to Portugal to retire should read our D7 retirement guide.

Once the report reaches Ramalho's desk, the government has signalled it will read it behind closed doors before sharing it with unions, employers and parliament. Whatever it proposes, the politics will be fierce: pension age and contribution rates are among the most charged questions in Portuguese public life, and a minority government with no labour-market consensus has little room to manoeuvre. The 30 June deadline is the start of that fight, not the end of it.