Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-272"
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"en.20000412.10.3-272"2
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"Mr President, where supplementary pensions are concerned, the crucial issue is whether one wants to provide pensioners with security in their old age or to reinforce Europe’s capital markets. These are not only two quite different goals, but it is also difficult to combine them in one and the same system. The Commission’s proposal and both the reports we are debating today give priority to the needs of the capital market. The hope is that the market-based pensions will then also prove to be good for pensioners in thirty or forty years’ time. How matters will turn out, however, we do not know. If one considers how Europe has changed during the last thirty to forty years and acknowledges that circumstances are going to change just as much in the future, then one can see how uncertain such forecasts are.
There is a large deficit when it comes to security and solidarity in the pensions area because the risk is so great and because there can never be enough security and solidarity. Supplementary assurances are therefore a problem. They are, of course, much less secure than a system of basic pensions which has been financed on the basis of solidarity.
I also believe that supplementary assurances and supplementary pensions may be needed, but then their managers ought to be obliged to invest in such instruments as provide solid savings in the long term, instead of having short-term rates on the stock exchange and global financial capitalism determine how matters will stand for pensioners in the future.
I also believe it would have been commendable if these supplementary pension systems could have been run as pension funds on the basis of solidarity under the aegis of trade unions, as happens in certain Member States. Even if these too are market-based, they offer much more in terms of stability and security than the privatised pension assurances. It now looks as if we are to have a liberal arrangement in the pensions field in Europe, and I shall therefore advise my voters to invest their surplus funds in safer instruments than private pension assurances. To young people I would say: pin your hopes on education and on developing your skills. And to older people I would say: acquire a nice, inexpensive place to live in the autumn of your years. We politicians ought to be putting our faith in a good, sound system of basic pensions."@en1
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