Brussels, 27/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday evening 26 November, following six years of deadlock, the European Parliament and Council of the EU reached a compromise on rules to allow EU workers who move to a different EU country to safeguard their supplementary pension rights. The agreement still needs to be formally approved by the European Parliament and member state ambassadors to the EU.
Negotiations have been painstaking but an agreement was finally reached on the most controversial points, namely the period of affiliation and scope of application. Member states will have four years to transpose the directive, which will allow them to standardise very disparate practices in a sector that is expanding significantly and which has been promoted by the European Commission and Parliament alike. This directive effectively means that the period of active membership of a scheme needed for a person to keep supplementary pension entitlements must not exceed three years. In Luxembourg, for example, this period is currently ten years and in Germany it is five.
As pointed out by EP rapporteur Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP, Netherlands) at a press conference on Wednesday 27 November, introducing a single “vesting period” is no small feat. This directive will therefore only apply to European workers moving within the EU, and cross-border workers. This latter category was the second issue to that required extremely tough negotiations. The rapporteur rather sarcastically pointed out that transposition of this directive would therefore lead to a situation where Europeans who move within the EU would have more rights than those who stay in their own countries. The Council refused to allow this directive to apply within states for occupational pensions that are financed or co-financed by employers and which are, therefore, linked to specific work contracts. (JK/transl.fl)