EUROPE – The European Commission is going to present a draft directive on occupational pension portability within the first quarter of next year, a top EU official said.

Georg Fischer, head of unit for social protection, pensions and health, at the European Commission’s employment and social affairs directorate general, confirmed that the pension mobility draft directive will be presented by the Commission in the first quarter of 2005.

“This directive will reduce the obstacles to mobility created by rules on supplementary pension provisions and enable workers to exercise their right to free movement more effectively,” he said.

Fischer was speaking at a conference in Leuven, Belgium, organised by the European Association of Paritarian Institutions (AEIP).

Earlier this month Hewitt head of research Leonardo Sforza, speaking to IPE on the sidelines of the Multipensions event in Amsterdam, indicated that such a directive would be presented next year.

“It will be very difficult to get this endorsed if it imposes strict rules on vesting rights, acquiring rights and actuarial assumptions," he said.

A pensions portability directive has been on the cards for some time. In April IPE reported that Jérôme Vignon, director of the Commission’s directorate general for employment and social affairs, confirmed it was planning a directive.

The European Parliamentary Pension Forum said at the time that the Commission had decided on a so-called “minimal harmonisation” approach because “the water between the social partners has proved to be too deep”.

Vignon said that the Commission was preparing an impact assessment study of such a directive.

And in June he said the EU’s enlargement had made the issue of portable pensions urgent. He added that the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision directive would “enable us to manage one aspect of transferability by having a possibility to work cross-border and to be able to be a member of multiple schemes”.

Topics