The ETUC calls for pension savings to be fully protected in the proposal for Pan-European Personal Pension which will now go to negotiations between the EU Institutions, following the vote in the EP’s Economic Affairs Committee earlier this week.
The Committee failed to ensure that PEPP providers would be required to guarantee workers’ pension savings when investing them on the financial market.
The Committee did achieve some improvements in the role of European and national monitoring authorities, the reference to preferential investment of funds with good governance and positive environmental and social impacts. Also, a “basic option” would be available to all savers with obligatory explanatory information.
The ETUC calls on the negotiations to ensure more guarantees to savers. It also calls for a regulatory system that does not compete with collective pension schemes.
“The PEPP and other private individual schemes are not the solution to an ageing Europe slowly recovering from an economic crisis” said Liina Carr, ETUC Confederal Secretary. “Instead the EU should concentrate on making public and occupational pension schemes more inclusive, adequate and effective.”
“Public and collective systems are more effective and sustainable, and need fixing far more urgently than private financial products with few guarantees on future returns. The European Pillar of Social Rights gives a right to adequate pensions for all. That’s what the EU now needs to deliver including through the adoption and the implementation of the Council recommendation on Access to Social Protection.”
