BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel is defending plans to allow some Germans to retire on full pensions at 63 and insisting they won’t stop her advocating painful reforms in other countries.

Germany is raising the retirement age gradually to 67 from 65 but the government plans, at the insistence of Merkel’s new center-left coalition partners, to allow people who’ve paid into the pension system for 45 years to retire at 63 without taking a financial hit.