EUROPE – The European Commission is planning a draft directive on occupational pension portability for next Spring, according to a Brussels-based consultant at Hewitt Associates.
"There is a draft directive going out, probably next Spring, which will attempt to handle the question of improvement of portability of pension rights for occupational pension schemes,” said Leonardo Sforza, Hewitt’s head of research.
“It will be very difficult to get this endorsed if it imposes strict rules on vesting rights, acquiring rights and actuarial assumptions," he told IPE on the sidelines of the Multipensions event in Amsterdam.
The idea of 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 harmonization” approach because “the water between the social partners has proved to be too deep”.
Vignon told the forum that the Commission was preparing an impact assessment study of such a directive.
And in June he said the enlargement of the European Union has 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”.
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