Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-10-Speech-3-191"
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"en.20020410.6.3-191"2
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"Mr President, I in turn would like to thank Mr Fatuzzo for his report, presented as always with a great deal of passion, which is situated in a demographic context, as indeed the United Nations Secretary-General has just emphasised at the Second World Assembly on Ageing, currently being held in Madrid. He reiterated on this occasion that in 2040, there will be more people in the world who are over 60 years old than there will be under fifteen. The forecasts for European demographic change are even more significant, as 40% of the European population will be 65 or over in 2025, according to Eurostat. Therefore, the consequences for the balance of pensions systems, in particular, of this ageing of the population – which is in fact an undeniable sign of progress in terms of health and social aspects – give cause for concern, as the current proportion of four workers to one pensioner will only be two workers to one pensioner in 2030.
That is why the European debate particularly welcomes the Commission’s communication, which aims to guarantee safe and sustainable pensions through an integrated approach to the strategies of the Member States, whose pension schemes, especially state schemes, are managed at national level.
It should be noted that many countries of the European Union have begun to take bold steps to perpetuate their pensions systems. This is not the case of the French Government, which has not implemented the urgent and essential reforms, and, what is more, the national debate with which we are faced in France is evidence of this.
What I would like to point out here, in particular by referring to the Fatuzzo report, is that although the organisation and financing of state pensions must remain the responsibility of the Member States, the open coordination method proposed in this field by the Gothenburg Council should certainly encourage national reforms and enrich them with experiences of other States.
In this regard, Commissioner, we look forward to the presentation of the first national plans in the autumn, while insisting once again that the European Parliament should be more closely involved in this procedure. Also from this perspective, unlike others, I am delighted that the Barcelona European Council of 15 and 16 March 2002 committed, on the one hand, to stepping up efforts to provide mature workers with greater possibilities of remaining in the job market, for example by means of flexible gradual retirement programmes and guaranteeing genuine access to education and life-long training, and, on the other, to gradually increasing the average retirement age in the European Union by about five years by 2010. It seems to me that we should be able to offer, in the current context, an approach of free choice, based on employees’ individual careers and their various life stages, which sometimes require them to keep working past retirement age, as obligatory retirement can lead to an immeasurable waste of human resources."@en1
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