Strasbourg, 20/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted, on a show of hands, the report by Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP-ED, Netherlands) on complementary pension rights, the aim of which is to facilitate workers' mobility by setting minimum standards for the acquisition and preservation of supplementary pension rights. In so doing, MEPs stated clearly their desire for common minimum standards for acquiring supplementary pension rights and fair treatment of dormant pension rights. They also adopted a more cautious approach on the transfer of pension rights and came out against the Commission proposal to include this right in the new directive. Finally, they sharply criticised the Social Council of 30 May 2007 for not reaching a political agreement on this draft directive following the Netherlands' veto (see EUROPE 9436). The Commission will now bring forward an amended draft directive, based on the EP work. This proposal will then have to be adopted unanimously by the Council and in second reading by the EP (for the report adopted on first reading, see EUROPE 9398).
Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said that this directive had to respond to demographic change and the ageing of the population. It fell, he said, within the framework of flexicurity, which allowed greater mobility to go hand in hand with social protection, and he felt the text was “real progress”. He added that what was causing disagreement between the Council and the EP were the conditions for acquiring supplementary pension rights and the scope of the directive with regard to vested rights. “We might talk about the Lisbon strategy, the need for greater worker mobility, to act and to have new regulation, but the fact of the matter is that unanimity is one of the Council's rules,” noted German Federal Minister Michael Glos, arguing for making fair and just treatment of dormant rights a reality and allowing planning of the transposition of the directive into national law. He ended by saying, “We will manage to take a decision if the political will is there”. Ria Oomen-Ruijten said that she hoped that the new proposal “will lead to better cooperation with the Dutch and that the Portuguese presidency will get agreement in the Council”.
With this report, the EP has set common standards for acquiring supplementary pension rights: MEPs set a maximum “vesting” period of five years i.e. after five years in a job, employees will have acquired rights that have to be paid or preserved after the termination of their employment. In addition, there should no longer be any vesting conditions for members of a scheme once they have reached the age of 25. MEPs also emphasised that if the employee has not yet acquired vested pension rights when the employment is terminated, all the contributions paid, or their investment value if the worker bears the risk, should be reimbursed. The EP called on member states to take steps to ensure that employees can, when they leave an employment, retain their pension rights in the scheme where they were acquired (“dormant rights”) and guarantee “fair treatment” of those dormant pension rights. The value of dormant rights should, therefore, generally develop in line with that of the rights of active members. MEPs underline that the values of dormant rights should be adjusted in accordance with, for example, inflation rates, salary levels, current pensions or the return on investment intended by the supplementary pension provider. Finally, the EP adopted a more cautious approach to the transferability of pension rights and spoke against the Commission's proposal to include this right into the new directive. It called on the Commission to draw up a report, no later than five years after the directive takes effect, on the conditions for transferring capital representing workers' supplementary pension rights. This report should be the basis for proposing any amendments to this directive, the EP said.
Astrid Lulling (EPP-ED, Luxembourg) said that acquired rights had, within the framework of subsidiarity and flexicurity, to be maintained for employees who changed jobs inside or outside a country. Othmar Karas (EPP-ED, Austria), and other MEPs, felt “there has to be a balance between companies' economic security and employees' social security, between those who stayed in a company and those who left for career reasons”. Jiri Mastalka (GUE/NGL, Czech Republic), and Mary Lou Mc Donald (GUE/NGL, Ireland) disagreed with the age increase (from 21 to 25) for the acquisition of supplementary pension rights. Derek Clark (IND/DEM, UK) said: “I am for mobility and for people being able to take their pension with them, but is up to pensions authorities to look after all that!” (gb)