Commission drops pension-transfer proposal

The European Commission tabled, on Tuesday 9 October, a revised draft directive on the supplementary pension rights of workers, which has been stripped of disputed provisions regarding the transfer of retirement schemes across borders.

The Commission’s updated draft came in response to a European Parliament vote in June 2007 (see EURACTIV, 18 June 2007), in which MEPs had removed all provisions with respect to the transferability of supplementary pension rights from one company to another. Transferability is defined as “transferring a capital representing the acquired pension entitlements from one scheme to another”. 

Parliament’s amendments shifted the directive’s focus away from pension transfers and onto the acquisition and preservation of dormant rights (defined as “pension rights retained under the scheme in which they have been acquired by a deferred beneficiary who will receive a pension through this supplementary scheme once the eligibility requirements have been met”). 

Parliament’s vote was influenced by criticism voiced by small and medium-sized companies, who called the transferability clauses “unrealistic”. 

When presenting the new, amended proposal, Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimír Špidla stressed that transferability of pension rights, even if not present in the proposal, was still what the Commission was aiming at. “The urgency of improving workers’ rights is why I was ready to accept a compromise on the issue of the transfer of supplementary rights, as well as the exclusion from the Directive of pension schemes that are already closed to new members. It is important that we take this significant step now, and not risk further delay by trying to achieve all our objectives at once,” Špidla said. 

The proposal contains a provision (Article 9.2) according to which the transferability issue will be re-examined five years after the Directive’s adoption. The re-drafted proposal needs unanimity in the Council and must be voted upon again by Parliament in a second reading. 

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