GERMANY - The government is planning to raise the retirement age for civil servants from 65 to 67 from 2029 - although those with military or police jobs may still be able to retire at 60.

Interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble said the increase in the retirement age for federal civil servants - including judges, military personnel and federal police - would be part of a draft law to be unveiled in the autumn.

"Civil servants for the federal government will also have to accept constraints in their pension just like everyone else who is in the state pension scheme," Schäuble said.

The government raised the retirement age for the state-run, pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension scheme last spring, from 65 now to 67 from 2029.

Like with the scheme for federal civil servants, this means retirees will only get full benefits if they stop working at 67 and will receive reduced benefits should they stop working before then.

A key difference between the two schemes, however, is PAYG pensioners will see their maximum benefit decline to 43% of former salary from 2030 from around 50% now. This compares with a current maximum benefit of 71.5% for a federal civil servant.

Indeed, BSTZ, a political lobby for German taxpayers, said while it welcomed the government's move as an important first step, federal civil servants must accept deeper cuts.

"As with the PAYG system, the government must introduce a sustainable dimension meaning that benefits may not increase if the number of pensioners rise while the number of contributors decreases," BSTZ said in a statement.

"It's also unfair how the civil servants' pensions are calculated. Instead of calculating benefits based on their last salary, an average must be arrived at taking into account all previous salaries," the lobby added.

For the civil servants' part, Peter Heesen, chairman of their political lobby dbb, said in a statement the dbb accepted the increase in the retirement age on the basis of fairness.

But Heesen said during a conversation with Schäuble last month, he made clear because of the stressful nature of their jobs, it would be unwise to raise the retirement age for military personnel and federal police from 60 currently.

"We hope that the interior minister takes our view under advisement and if he does not, we'll see what the German parliament does with his draft law," the dbb chair said.

In related news, the government of Baden-Württemberg said it too would raise the retirement age for its 180,000 civil servants in the state to 67 from 2029.

It is unclear whether Germany's 15 other states will follow the example set by the federal government and Baden-Württemberg.

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