EU workers to enjoy full pension rights

Member states back compromise deal.

Eight years after the European Commission made its initial proposal, member states yesterday (4 December) agreed a compromise that would bolster the pension rights of European Union workers moving across the member states.

Current EU rules ensure that workers moving to another EU country do not lose their statutory pension rights, ie those provided by the state. But no such EU-wide rules exist for supplementary pension schemes financed or co-financed by employers.

Under the directive, which member states will have four years to implement, employees acquire transferable pension rights after a maximum of three years, significantly longer than the one year proposed by the Commission in 2005.

“European workers can now enjoy full pension rights when they move to another member state. The legislation will help to eliminate barriers to the free movement of workers”, said Ria Oomen-Ruijten, the centre-right Dutch MEP who drafted Parliament’s response to the proposal.

On the insistence of MEPs, cross-border workers will also benefit from the same level of protection under the directive.

The European Parliament still has to rubber stamp the compromise, agreed by negotiators representing member states and the Parliament last week.

The difficulty member states encountered in agreeing a common approach arose from the wide differences between their national supplementary pension schemes.