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| Tittel: | European Pension Policy Initiatives and National Reforms : Between Financial Sustainability and Adequacy |
| Forfattere: | Ervik, Rune |
| Dato: | Dec-2006 |
| Forlag: | Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies
UNIFOB AS |
| Serie/Rapport nr.: | Working Paper 10 - 2006 |
| Sammendrag: | The EU Open method of Coordination (OMC) represents one strategy for pension
reform that ideally combines agreement on common objectives with different
institutional and national approaches as means of reaching these objectives.
This paper will focus on the OMC in pensions, seen as representing a pension policy
discourse, and how it relates to national pension policy in three particular countries; two
member states; Germany and the UK and one non-member country; Norway. Each of
the three countries represents different welfare state and pension models, i.e. the
Bismarck-, the Beveridge-, and the Nordic model respectively. Two key questions are
addressed: Does the OMC process promote a particular kind of pension system model
through its goal of providing adequate, sustainable and modernized pensions? How
does it compare to and does it challenge existing national systems as found in the three
selected cases in terms of their institutional and normative foundations? In addition the
paper briefly discusses in what way the OMC in pension potentially impact national
pension debates and reforms.
The empirical material applied for analysis focuses mainly on the National Strategy
Reports and the Joint reports by the Commission and the Council. Theoretically an
institutional perspective is followed stressing the interaction between different
institutions of pension provision and the adhering discourses surrounding these
institutions. Thus, institutions are seen as instruments for solving problems (for instance
income security in old age) and at the same time they are expressing a normative content
inherent in their specific solutions. In this way each pension pillar (seen as an
institution) contains its own more or less particular discourse. This paper distinguishes
between three particular discourses: Social right-, status security-, and a private pension
discourse.
Analysing the OMC pension discourse as laid out in the Joint reports, the following
key elements are identified: Firstly, the issue of financial sustainability takes precedence
over the goal of adequacy. To obtain sustainability there is a need to raise employment
rates and to stem growth in public pension expenditures. Secondly, this argumentation
implies a new division of pension pillars by increasing the role of occupational and
private pensions. In addition, it entails internal normative changes of pension pillars by
strengthening traits known from private pension insurance. Thirdly, the goal of
adequacy is shaped by the financial sustainability discourse and its focus on public
pension expenditures. Fourthly, seen as a pension model the OMC on pensions
promotes a hybrid model of pension provision containing elements from all three
pension systems, but with the important qualification that it is really «hybridization with
a bias». This means that the model represents a new pension blend that contains fewest
traits from the Bismarckian model and with more prominence to elements known from
multi-pillar systems as well as minimum pension guarantees as found in the new postreform
Nordic model.
From this follows that this hybrid pension model has various implications in terms of
challenges to national paradigms: In the German case we find a clear move away from public first pillar provision and increasing reliance on second and third pillar
provision. In addition, focus on minimum security challenge the status security
orientation of the German system. For the UK there is no confrontation in terms of
financial sustainability, implying a continuance of the tradition of pension privatisation,
and providing a complex system of means tested benefits to secure minimum security.
For the Norwegian case the hybrid OMC paradigm represents a challenge in terms of
increasing reliance on occupational pension provision in providing standard security and
by containing future public pension spending. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1956/2040 |
| ISSN: | 1503-0946 (Print ISSN) |
| Vises i samlingene: | Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies - Working Papers
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