9. PENSIONS
(24326)
6527/2/03
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Commission and Council draft report on adequate and sustainable pensions.
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| Legal base: | —
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| Document originated: | 3 March 2003
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| Deposited in Parliament: | 5 March 2003
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| Department: | Work and Pensions
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| Basis of consideration: | EM of 11 March 2003
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| Previous Committee Report: | None; but see (24116) 15876/02: HC 63-vii (2002-03), paragraph 14 (15 January 2003)
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| To be discussed in Council: | 21 March 2003
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| Committee's assessment: | Politically important
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| Committee's decision: | Cleared
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Background
9.1 The Lisbon European Council of March 2000 charged
the Social Protection Committee and Economic Policy Committee[18]
to work jointly, through voluntary co-operation between Member
States, to establish whether pension systems were evolving in
a financially and socially sustainable way. Subsequent European
Councils have adopted guiding principles and common objectives
for pension systems.
9.2 The Commission was asked to prepare a draft Joint
Report (from the Council and the Commission) on adequate and sustainable
pensions for the Spring 2003 European Council. In January 2003
we reported[19] on that
draft which was based on a synthesis of National Strategy Reports
submitted by each Member State, supplemented by other information
sources, including EUROSTAT data, pension expenditure projections
by the Ageing Working Group of the Economic Policy Committee and
a Eurobarometer survey.
9.3 That draft report had sections on the challenge of
population ageing, pension adequacy, financial sustainability
of pension systems, and modernization in response to changing
needs. An annex to the document summarised the main features of
each Member State's system.
The document
9.4 The present document is a revised version of the
earlier draft, which has been approved by the Commission and the
Council for adoption by the Spring European Council. The majority
of the lengthy report is unchanged but there have been some amendments
in response to Member States' comments, including the UK position
as described to us previously. These amendments include:
- correction of inaccuracies in the description of the UK pension
system. Similarly other Member States have had references to their
systems amended;
- updating to include text on proposals set out in the UK Green
Paper on Pensions published in December 2002;
- combining data for a number of charts in the previous draft
and moving them into Table 2. A methodological note has been added
to the report highlighting the limitations of the European Community
Household Panel data for making meaningful cross-country comparison;
- redrafting the conclusions of the report to better reflect
the "overall assessment" section at the beginning of
the report. This was proposed by the UK, with support from other
Member States, so that the interrelationship between financial
sustainability and adequacy of pensions systems was established
within the text of the report.
The Government's view
9.5 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department
for Work and Pensions (Malcolm Wicks) repeats the Government's
general endorsement of the draft report and tells us the inaccuracies
in the earlier draft which he drew to our attention have been
corrected.
Conclusion
9.6 In clearing the earlier draft, we noted that this
document gives an interesting comparative background to the ongoing
debate on pension policy and its wider economic and social context,
and that it has no binding application. We are content to clear
this improved version of the report.
18 The
Social Protection Committee, comprising representatives of national
social affairs ministries and the Commission, and the Economic
Policy Committee, comprising representatives of national ministries
of finance, economics, central banks, the Commission and the European
Central Bank, were established to advise the Council on social
and economic policies. Back
19 See
headnote. Back
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