Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-14-Speech-1-139"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20051114.17.1-139"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as Mrs van den Burg has already said, we are concerned – concerned about the lack of seriousness with which this directive has been transposed since it was adopted two years ago.
There are two sides to this directive: one has to do with the internal market, which the directive makes stronger for all service providers in the field of occupational retirement provision, and the other has to do with social security for workers, with more dialogue between employers and workers when occupational retirement schemes are set up and in the course of their further development.
Boarding the airliner this morning, I was handed a magazine. The headline on the cover stated that there would, in future, be no getting away from occupational retirement provision. As you, Commissioner, will have seen from having read the new German Government’s working agreement, two substantial paragraphs of which are devoted to securing the old age pension system, this has become no less important an issue in the years since the directive was drafted and adopted.
There is still not enough risk capital in the European Union; in the USA, as we are well aware, it is the pension funds that do most to create it. The internal market and the financial services sector still offer potential. The pension funds – the businesses that deal with occupational pension provision – do not yet enjoy a complete single internal market.
Much is at present being said about the European lifestyle model and the European social model. Occupational retirement provision, which involves more of the market at the same time as social security – is an essential precondition for workers’ mobility and flexibility, as well as for the securing of our systems of provision for old age and of securing a comfortable old age in a society in which people live for longer and longer.
What this directive also makes clear is that there is an imbalance in powers and responsibilities, an imbalance between single market competence and social security systems. This is something that the directive attempts to rectify, but it is also the very reason why we are putting this question, for it is the Member States that are empowered to transpose this directive and to take account of those aspects that we have addressed but that are not set down in law; they are also responsible for doing so.
From your speeches and from the facts, we know that, to date, only six Member States have notified their transposition measures; six more have done so in part and 13 are unaccounted for. As things stood on 23 September 2005, 13 states had not done what they were supposed to do.
That, Commissioner, is why we are asking you what action you propose taking if, by the end of the year, not all the Member States have transposed this directive. What is it that makes it so difficult for them to do that? Unless I am misinformed, there were meetings of the Member States and the Commission in October 2004 and April 2005, at which it became evident that its provisions relating to social security and labour law were the source of the most problems. We have to face up to the tension between these two; the one must not be an excuse for a blockade by the other, whether in the single market or in the necessary security measures that we have addressed in our directive, and so we also ask you what conclusions you draw from this, whether you believe that more measures will be needed and what effect the disparities in tax legislation have on the transposition of this directive."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples