Brussels, 20/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - Vladimir Spidla, European Commissioner responsible for employment, social affairs and equal opportunities, presented a proposal for a directive to the press on 20 October. The proposed directive aims to remove regulatory obstacles created due to national differences in supplementary pension schemes. These obstacles relate to conditions for acquiring pension rights, the conditions for keeping dormant rights, and the transferability of acquired rights. The proposal also improves information provided for workers on the consequences of professional mobility when it comes to pension rights. It sets at 1 July 2008 the date when the directive takes effect, allowing a transitional period for some provisions, if not exemption. Adoption will be according to codecision procedure with unanimous vote in Council.
The proposal is aimed at “promoting worker mobility” in a context linked to reactivating the Lisbon Strategy and to the ageing population, Vladimir Spidla said. He felt that such mobility is “largely linked to the portability of pension rights”, which means that people can move jobs and country without losing work pension benefits. Not to act would be to take the risk of discouraging workers from changing jobs and country, he warned. In future “30% of workers will be concerned” by these schemes as opposed to “10% today”.
The proposal for a directive applies to work pensions linked to a specific job: group insurance contracts, sharing schemes within one or several branches/sectors, capitalisation schemes or the promise of a pension guaranteed by companies. It does not apply to individual retirement schemes or State pensions. It does not concern independent workers or social security payments covered by Regulation 1408/71 (family allowances, sickness and maternity benefits, or allowances for invalidity, old age, accidents at work or professional complaints, unemployment or decease).
The proposal provides for several measures which relax the conditions for acquiring these rights: - reimbursement or transfer of all contributions that a worker has paid if the worker has not yet acquired rights in the supplementary pension scheme; - fixing at 21 the age from when a worker acquires rights; - reducing the waiting period before the worker can be affiliated to one year (except if the minimum age is reached); - limiting to two years the waiting period after which the worker acquires rights. Member States should, moreover, ensure that the worker who changes jobs and country is not faced with a substantial reduction in dormant rights left in the complementary pension scheme of former employment. Finally, a worker must have the choice between keeping his rights acquired in the former work relationship and transferring his acquired rights.
According to the proposal, Member States will apply the directive on 1 July 2008. They will be able to benefit from a further five-year delay to allow a worker to acquire pension rights after a maximum two-year affiliation period. They will be able to exempt from provisions relating to the transfer of rights those schemes that work by repartition, support funds and companies that form provisions on their balance sheet with a view to paying out complementary pensions. This exemption is of a kind that meets with the satisfaction of Germany, where such practice is frequent and reach a value of EUR 200 billion, Vladimir Spidla states. Every five years, the Commission will draft a report on application of the directive. In 2018, it could make a new proposal aimed at reviewing the exemptions granted. The complementary retirement schemes concern 95% of employees in the Netherlands, 43% in the United Kingdom, 10% in France, 0.6% in Poland and do not exist at all in the Czech Republic.