The EU’s universal pension is on its deathbed
The EU is no stranger to one-size-fits-all regulation, from restricting Ireland’s ability to raise interest rates and avoid financial meltdown to absurd regulations on the shape of fruit and vegetables, which lasted 15 years before the “return of the curvy cucumber”.
Yet few policies have been as disastrous as its idea for an EU-wide pension, the Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP).
Four years after it was created, just 10,000 people have signed up from a working population of almost 260 million.
Despite its noble aim of boosting retirement planning among a sceptical population, the EU itself even described it as “excessively burdensome”.
It's the bureaucratic balancing act the EU has never achieved, staying clear of that zone where chair-polishers render life so excessively burdensome that economies flounder, systems crumble and funding falters.
Even if we put aside the ingrained problems of bureaucracy, the EU still has major problems over an ageing population and pension provision. Not specific to the EU, but it's one of those huge, steadily evolving problems the EU is poorly equipped to tackle at an EU level.
Even if we put aside the ingrained problems of bureaucracy, the EU still has major problems over an ageing population and pension provision. Not specific to the EU, but it's one of those huge, steadily evolving problems the EU is poorly equipped to tackle at an EU level.
Europe is mired in an ageing crisis: by 2030, a quarter of EU citizens will be over 65 after decades of falling birth rates and rising life expectancy. Two thirds of workers have zero pension savings, adding a potential old age poverty epidemic to the unprecedented strain already facing health and social care services.
A related problem is that EU bureaucrats never seem to give up on dud ideas, never willing to learn from experience, change direction and move on. It's another of those obvious yet serious weaknesses EU enthusiasts tend to avoid.
Despite the extremely disappointing take-up figures, however, the EU is not giving up.
In November, it proposed a series of changes, including removing the advice requirement and 1pc fee cap from Basic PEPPs. A tailored PEPP, offering the more complex and potentially more lucrative investment options some savers seek, would also be available and the requirement to offer membership in multiple countries will also be scrapped.
The intention is also to make the product more suitable to workplaces in the hope that take-up is bolstered by auto-enrolment.
10 comments:
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: "I'm from the EU and I'm here to help."
I wonder if any of our remainers, gobackers and similar fantasists have ever sat down and taken a really good look at the EUSSR's "achievements".
Jannie - EU failures don't seem to matter to EU fans, it seems to be a reassuring mix of undemanding allegiances and a shelter against personal responsibility.
Wot they need, wot they need, see, is a special Act of the EU parliament to set up a privileged pension for Keirigula.
dearieme - ha ha - Keirigula - I'll have to keep track of all these names. Who is the horse he promoted to Cabinet Minister I wonder?
How can the tell who is really eligible when they do not know who is in each of their collective countries. See the current 'uge Somali scam in Baltimore, I think.
Doonhamer - good point, massive scams on the horizon already.
Toss up between Phillipson and Ange. Two mares, eh?
dearieme - if Keirigula goes maybe we'll see the jump-off.
"Europe is mired in an aging crisis..." Perhaps amongst the indigenous population, but not amongst the Islamic communities. I understand that, in several countries, including the UK, the most popular boys name is Mohammed, in various spellings. I would suggest that, over the next five years, more children from Muslim parents will be born them from indigenous patents. I'm three generations, there will be more Muslim citizens than indigenous, and then Europe will be another Islamic caliphate. And what annoys me is that our political masters are so stupid they are allowing them to do this. I'll have long popped my clogs, but it's those that follow behind me, I fear for.
Penseivat
Penseivat - I'll have popped my clogs too and younger generations will have to adapt to whatever comes. Possibly a few surprises are in store for them, but the culture which gave us what we are now frittering away will have gone. Maybe global cooling will cause people to leave in large numbers.
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