Italy reviews women's pensions but wary of broad reform

ROME (Reuters) - Italy will proceed with a rise in women's pension age for the public sector, mandated by Brussels to put them an equal footing with men, but the government does not believe the time is right for broader pension reform.

"In a period of uncertainty like this we don't want to add more doubt," Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi told Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday.

"But we will do reforms limited to the public sector to apply the European Court sentence," said the minister.

Italy's current disparity in the retirement age for men and women -- 65 and 60 respectively -- has been ruled discriminatory under European Union rules. It has now submitted to Brussels a plan to gradually erase this difference between 2010 and 2018.

Officials have estimated that this would save the state 2.3 billion euros in an eight year period.

One trade union, the CISL, said the decision would put women in the private sector at a disadvantage.

Italy has been urged by the International Monetary Fund, the main business lobby Confindustria and parts of the opposition to launch a much wider reform its costly pension system, in which they would also like to include the private sector.

In Italy 19 percent of people aged 60-64 are still at work versus 33 percent in Germany and Spain, 45 percent in Britain and 60 percent in Sweden. Reducing this burden would free funds for economic stimulus and emergency welfare, reformists say.

But Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose first government collapsed in 1994 over a row on pensions and whose later pension reforms in 2003 were watered down by his centre-left successor Romano Prodi, appears unwilling to expend more political capital on them.

(Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni; writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Andy Bruce)