Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2016-11-23-Speech-3-607-000"
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"en.20161123.33.3-607-000"2
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"Mr President, I am glad we are having this debate on this important piece of legislation here in plenary this evening. It is the outcome of an important and positive negotiation, for which I want to thank everyone in this Chamber.
On intergenerational balance, it has been recognised in the text that there should be intergenerational solidarity between younger and older members of a pension scheme, so that younger generations should not be disproportionately burdened if there are losses in the scheme.
I am optimistic that this directive can pave the way for a stronger internal market for pensions across the European Union, but I also feel that it can kick-start a real debate on pensions in the EU – a debate that is much needed here. Lastly, can I make this remark: I hope that we will recast the debate on pensions, which is necessary in a situation where so many people who are currently working across the 28 EU Member States lack pension cover for the future. That is an issue that we need to address in a creative and constructive way.
In June of this year, we reached agreement with the Dutch Council Presidency: I believe this is a good outcome for European pensioners, and we have brought more protection, more transparency and more security to the way that occupational funds are managed across Europe. I believe we have achieved the right balance between respecting differences between Member States’ individual pension schemes and encouraging pension mobility within the European Union.
Although this is a minimum harmonisation directive, it is also an extremely sensitive piece of legislation in that we are dealing with other people’s money here. We are dealing with people who have saved money, who have put that money aside, and we must always respect that. This has been a guiding principle that I had in the course of the negotiations.
I want to highlight the excellent working partnership in Parliament’s negotiating team, and that applies to all my colleagues and all the political Groups. I was proud of the fact that we received a very broad majority in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. I want to thank my colleagues, here this evening, who worked with me as their rapporteur and I also want to thank the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality for their work in terms of the opinions they gave on the proposal. I especially want to thank the secretariat of the Economic and Affairs Committee for the excellent work they did and the expertise they brought to this issue.
Ultimately, I believe Parliament’s position was upheld very strongly in the negotiations, and I want to highlight some of our achievements. On funding provisions, we managed to ensure that under-funding can occur when doing cross-border business. Currently under-funding is not permitted for cross-border activity, and this has caused a great deal of uncertainty for cross-border pension business. We brought clarity to this area, and we have ensured that appropriate action should be taken by regulators to correct the situation.
On cross-border transfers we have ensured that when a pension scheme is being transferred to another Member State there is just one single authorisation from the regulator of the host Member State along with prior consent from the home Member State regulator. Both regulators must assess a limited list of criteria when approving transfers. The transfer must also be approved by members and beneficiaries of the scheme – a crucial issue. These procedures have never been set out before in EU legislation, so we have made advances here.
On the pension benefit statement, this annual statement to members and beneficiaries on their pension rights has been turned from a very prescriptive and fully harmonised statement into a principles-based approach, and therefore we have more flexibility in terms of using Parliament’s proposed structure. We have also ensured that members and beneficiaries receive, at the very least, the key information on their contributions, the costs, the guarantees and the projections within their scheme.
We have ensured that the depository function remains as a Member State option, so as to take into account the variety of pension systems and the way in which depository activities can be conducted.
On environmental, social and government (ESG) risks for occupational pension funds: under this directive, we now have to assess these risks when making investment decisions. This idea follows the work of the United Nations. This is the first financial services directive in which such a requirement has been incorporated. It was a crucial issue for many members of Parliament’s negotiating team, and we have achieved that."@en1
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