The European Parliament's main economic committee has called on European Union
member states to make progress on implementing the directive on occupational pension funds.
The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has adopted a text on the state of European financial services which was
prepared by Dutch MEP Ieke van den Burg . It will now be tabled to a plenary session of the Parliament with a view to it becoming a resolution.
The Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision
directive is scheduled to come into force in September this
year and there have been
questions about its implementation at member state level.
According to the text, the Parliament “encourages the member states to make progress with the implementation of the IORP directive and to create an integrated internal market for supplementary pension fund investments”.
This would “increase the opportunities and alternatives for savers and provide them with maximum return on their investments”.
Such schemes play a key role “in integrating and guaranteeing
efficiency and liquidity on the
European markets, and their
growing importance to the sustainability of social security systems in view of the fact that the union’s
population is ageing".
A warning over the fragmentation of European pensions schemes from Spanish MEP José Manuel García-Margallo y Marfil, did not make it into the final text.
The MEPs have also called on the Commission to consider action on hedge funds. The text “notes the growth in the volume of assets managed through hedge funds and other collective savings products outside the scope of the UCITS directive”.
And it also “notes the initiatives of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to register hedge fund managers and/or advisers, and urges the Commission to consider whether there is a need for action in the EU”.