The Dutch Parliament has delayed the proposed merger of Dutch central bank (DNB) and the pensions supervisory board (PVK) pension funds after its scrutiny uncovered “excessively generous” deals for the boards’ members.
The decision earlier in the week came after parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt forced a reopening of the debate on the merger and pushed through an amendment to the bill making the Finance Minister, Gerrit Zalm, directly responsible for the salary packages of central bank and PVK board members.
The debate came after Zalm
disclosed the board members’ salary levels, correcting information
he had given during a previous debate. “They were excessively generous terms, to put it mildly,” Omtzigt says.
In a written reply Zalm had revealed that at least one member of the DNB board was getting a salary and pension package of e600,000 a year, some e200,000 more than Zalm had previously claimed. “Collectively the board members also got an extra e1.5m in pre-pension payments,” Omtzigt says.
Omtzigt is a deputy for the Christian Democrats (CDA). “We are in favour of the merger but we were very unpleasantly surprised when we discovered just how generous the pension package of the pension supervisory board was,” he says.