The bridging pension is effectively an unemployment benefit which, unlike the standard unemployment benefit, does not decrease according to the length of time the recipient is jobless. But it has been criticised as a state subsidy for redundancies, since the government pays the benefit, while the employer pays a supplement. In other words, the company which has made the workers unemployed pays only the supplement, while the taxpayer has to pay the rest.

When it was first introduced, the bridging pension was only available from the age of 60. But, following the agreement between government, unions and employers known as the Generation Pact, the age at which the bridging pension could apply was lowered to 58. However, another part of the Generation Pact involved phasing out the bridging pension altogether, as most other EU states have done. Yet the latest development with Opel workers appears to have extended its use far beyond any limit ever intended.

In fact, the possibility was written into the Generation Pact from the start: in cases where at least one-third of workers were affected by a major restructuring, the age of 50 could be applied. That is what has happened in the case of Opel. Company and unions agreed to go for the bridging pension back in April. All that was required was for the government to agree.

Younger recipients, such as those at Opel, are technically supposed to be available to the job market up to the age of 58. They will spend six months in counselling to retrain them for other jobs, and subsequently must accept any suitable post or risk being demoted to ordinary unemployed with consequent loss of benefits.

However, according to figures issued by Flemish labour minister Philippe Muyters, only about 7% of recipients of the bridging pension – 115 out of 1,698 in all – found another job between January 2008 and September 2009.

If all 641 workers eligible for the measure were to take advantage of the bridging pension, it would cost the state €88.5 million between now and the time they reach 65 years (when they will receive the normal state pension), according to calculations by human resources consultancy SD Worx.

Meanwhile the organisation for small businesses, Unizo, lamented Milquet’s decision. “This sort of easy option is damaging for the workers concerned, for those companies with vacancies, and for society as a whole, which will have to carry the cost,” said chairman Karel Van Eetvelt.

Unizo’s position is that older workers will have to work longer to tackle the greying of the workforce, and to make pensions affordable for society. The organisation will press forward with its own initiatives to encourage employers to take on staff over 50 years old, and calls on the new government to reduce the number of ways for that crucial demographic to exit the workforce.

Meanwhile Milquet’s ministerial colleague Michel Daerden, the pensions minister, last week took the opportunity to decry her decision before the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs committee. Daerden was there to answer questions about the EU Commission’s recent Green Paper on pensions, in his role as representative of the Belgian presidency of the EU.

Daerden, more strongly than his socialist party colleagues, is a supporter of having people work longer , not necessarily beyond the current maximum age of 65, but at least until that age, which is on average not at present the case: most people retire before the age of 65. But that goal is undermined, he considers, if the bridging pension is already being evoked from the age of 50. “Belgium will have to look again at the bridging pension,” the minister told the parliament. “How are we to raise the effective retirement age if we’re letting people go at the age of 50?”