22/03/2012 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Strasbourg, 22.03.2012 - In a draft resolution adopted unanimously in Paris today, PACE’s Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development proposes a series of measures to guarantee decent pensions for all. On the basis of a report by Denis Jacquat (France, EPP/CD), the committee calls on Council of Europe member states to ensure an appropriate standard of living for pensioners by providing them, via the public pension system, with a minimum income at least equal to the national poverty threshold.
The committee advocates national pension systems based on several pillars and a mix of sources of pension income, including funded and pay-as-you-go components. The current trends towards smaller pensions and increased use of funded schemes are creating new intra- and inter-generational inequalities and therefore pose a threat to social cohesion in many member states, it says.
The committee recommends policies promoting the creation of jobs with sufficient pay to increase the capacity of individuals to provide for their retirement, while stating that, where possible, it will be necessary to restrict access to early retirement schemes and other possibilities of early withdrawal from the labour market. It also underlines the need to find appropriate solutions for people with periods in which they have made no pension contributions for various reasons.
The report, which will be debated during the PACE’s June session, takes stock of pension reforms in 31 of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states with the aid of recent statistics.