The Government has published the inter-ministerial decree signed on 19 November 2025 by the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Labor (published in the Official Journal on 28 November 2025), which confirms the automatic equalization of pensions starting from next January.
In essence, it is the annual adjustment of social security and welfare checks to the cost of living, calculated on the basis of ISTAT data and with the publication of the decree in the Official Journal, the parameters have been defined to understand how much the checks will increase from next year.
The revaluation rate set for 2026 is +1.4%. But does it all work out?
What the decree provides
The decree published in the Official Journal establishes a provisional rate of 1.4% (confirmation of the definitive index will have to be awaited: if there are deviations, the adjustment will take place in 2027) and provides:
Furthermore, equalization does not apply uniformly to all pensions. The law provides for a progressive mechanism:
What’s wrong according to Spi Cgil
The equalization of pensions set at 1.4% is absolutely insufficient to recover the loss of purchasing power produced by the inflationary surge of the two-year period 2022-2023, and today the expected increases are almost completely eroded by Irpef and surtaxes, with a minimal real impact and in many cases symbolic.
They say this from the Social Security offices of the national CGIL and the SPI CGIL, highlighting a picture that rather confirms the growing economic difficulty of many pensioners.
Minimum pensions, as we have already said, will increase by 3.12 euros, going from 616.67 to 619.79 euros. A pension in 2025 of 632 euros net will instead go to 641 euros net in 2026, only 9 euros more per month; a pension of 800 euros net will also increase by only 9 euros per month, from 841 to 850 euros; a pension of 1,000 euros net will increase by only 11 euros per month; while a pension of 1,500 euros gross, after taxation, will grow by just 17 euros per month.
Furthermore, trade unionists underline a structural node of the system: the absence of effective coordination between equalisation, taxation and social increases which produces distorting effects in terms of overall fairness. In some cases, in fact, welfare payments and integrated minimum pensions, indispensable tools against poverty and rightly exempt from Irpef, can determine final net amounts very close to, and sometimes higher than, those of slightly higher contributory pensions, built up with years of work and payments. It is explained that this does not depend on the people who receive these benefits, who must be supported and protected, but on a regulation that keeps the no tax area stuck at 8,500 euros per year and does not harmonize the rules between the different institutions.
The result would be a system that risks creating unwanted inequalities and fueling mistrust and a sense of social injustice, compromising the principles of equity and dignity on which public welfare must be based.
