All articles by Blake Evans-Pritchard
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Features
UCITS denied pensions access
There has been some progress made recently towards prising open the market for UCITS funds - repeatedly touted by the European Commission (EC) as one of the key investment vehicles for retirement savings - but for many market participants things have not gone far enough. Those advocating a tighter linkage ...
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Features
Portability plan in limbo
Despite the commission’s prevailing optimism that last-minute tweaks would have saved its pensions portability proposal from sinking beneath a quagmire of inter-governmental wrangling, those that are now handling the dossier say that it is looking decidedly more troublesome than they first allowed for. For one thing, Austria, which currently has ...
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Features
Shareholders become active
Ever since the financial scandals of Enron and WorldCom that rocked the US, and more recently Parmalat in Europe, there has been a growing awareness among fund managers that they should be more actively involved in the running of the companies that they invest in. On 10 January, the European ...
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Features
Mission impossible?
Advocates of the so-called 26th regime structure for pan-European pension structure have been seeking to clarify its core benefits in the face of heightened sceptism from the European Commission and market participants. In December, the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), one of the biggest voices calling for pan-European Pension ...
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Features
Too open and too loose?
An argument between Age, the older people’s platform, and the European Commission is simmering over how effective the EU’s peer review system is, just as the EU’s executive body gets ready to publish a series of non-binding suggestions for how member states can step up pension reforms. Following the submission ...
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Features
EU support needed for 'new' Europe
Much more co-ordinated action is needed at EU level to speed up pension reforms in the new member states, which are likely to suffer from an even greater demographic imbalance than “old” Europe, a conference in Brussels heard on November 14. The new member states were also told how they ...
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Features
Early retirement trend slows
Europe seems to be slowly inching away from its early retirement tendencies, according to the latest data on pensions expenditure issued by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical bureau. The release of this data coincides with the publication of a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which calls ...
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News
New EU states warned off World Bank model
EUROPE - New European Union member states have been warned about adopting the so-called World Bank pensions model.
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News
Belgium to submit IORP law in January
BELGIUM - Belgian financial supervisors will present the final version of a new law for implementing the EU directive on occupational pensions in the first week of January.
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Features
Are you listening?
Less than half of all EU member states were able to meet the 23 September deadline for telling the Commission that they had been able to fully implement the Institutions for Occupational Provision’s (IORP) directive, but many in the industry say this should not be a cause for concern. Previously, ...
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News
New pensions portability plan facing criticism
EUROPE – The European Commission’s new pensions portability proposal – officially unveiled today - has come in from criticism from several quarters.
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News
PAYG schemes exempt from portability directive
EUROPE – Pay-as-you-go and book reserve schemes are set to be exempt from the European Commission’s proposed directive on pensions portability.
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News
Belgium defies unions and raises retirement age
BELGIUM - Belgium has decided to increase the minimum age for retirement from 58 to 60, in line with recommendations from the European Commission – despite trade union concern.
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News
Belgian unions strike over retirement age
BELGIUM - One of Belgium's largest trade unions caused chaos in the nation’s capital on Friday by striking over government plans to push back the retirement age from 58 to 60, as a way of easing the pension burden in the country.
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News
Swiss in pension fact-finding trip to Brussels
SWITZERLAND - In recognition of growing EU involvement in pensions, Swiss-based think-tank Innovation Zweite Säule (IZS) has decided to turn its attention to Brussels.
