Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-287"
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"en.20030923.8.2-287"2
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"Mr President, pensions schemes, administered through common and universal public programmes, are acknowledged as a fundamental means of achieving social inclusion. Without pensions, benefits and other forms of social assistance, poverty levels in the European Union would exceed 40%. Any modernisation of state social security systems must, therefore, take this fact into account. This has not happened in most Member States introducing such reforms. The stubborn resistance of workers to measures threatening their fundamental rights in this regard is well-known. The cases of France, Portugal, Germany and Greece have already been mentioned here.
In this report, however, not enough is done to avoid these positions, which lead to the impairment of rights and welfare cover. Hence the set of proposals we have tabled, of which I would like to highlight the following:
a reference to the growing difficulties faced by pension funds in the wake of the worldwide stock market slump, which provides ample proof that the growing risks of the financial market have an adverse effect on the adequacy and sustainability of funded pension provision;
a critique of the antisocial nature of most reforms recently implemented by certain Member States, which have reduced state pensions considerably and attempted to raise the retirement age;
a note on the importance of adopting strategies for reforming pension schemes at European and national levels, promoting full employment along with social rights which strengthen and reinvigorate state pension schemes by broadening their financial bases, by ensuring that employers comply with their financial obligations, and by enhancing pay-as-you-go mechanisms;
lastly, a rejection of all attempts aiming to weaken or replace state schemes based on the principles of pay-as-you-go and solidarity, pointing out that, in order to guarantee pension schemes in the long term, it is vital to broaden the scope of their eligibility criteria and investigate new ways of financing statutory pension schemes, in particular by extending welfare contributions to all financial returns and establishing modulation for companies on the basis of the number of jobs created."@en1
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