Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-16-Speech-3-223"
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"en.20010516.9.3-223"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, I would also thank the rapporteur, Mr Cercas, for his work on the Commission’s communication, which I consider to be really sound and very informative. My group thinks it important that the Member States should organise the pensions systems in such a way that more account is taken of the fact that there will be more elderly people in the future. Money must be found for pensions, without exhausting Treasury funds and without there being astronomical tax rises.
Economists talk a lot, of course, about the burden of the elderly, and that makes many old people feel they are being held in contempt. ‘Why must we be portrayed as a burden,’ they say, ‘when we have made our contribution to the development of society?’ Others see the whole debate about future pension systems as concealing a real desire to undermine security and solidarity, but the intention is, of course, the very opposite, namely to ensure that there are good pensions in the future, too, and to remedy deficiencies and absurdities in the present systems. I therefore think it good that the agenda should have been enlarged and that it should not only deal with healthy public finances, the internal market for supplementary pensions and increased growth and employment, but also with security in old age, the need to combat problems of poverty among the elderly and the removal of that discrimination against women which is often built into pensions systems.
I believe and hope that the broader agenda will promote grassroots support for the reforms of the pensions system. Pensions based on savings must be an important part of pensions systems in the future. It is only right and proper that we should each of us take responsibility for our own old age. This cannot, of course, come as some sort of surprise. A side benefit is that pensions savings through active investments can help secure the prosperity that is the basis for pensions of the future. Finally, I want to emphasise that systems and problems differ greatly from one country to another and that pensions are – and must be – a matter over which individual nations have jurisdiction. For that reason, we do not want an unduly restrictive framework to be imposed upon the coordination of countries’ reforms, and this will be reflected in the way in which the Liberal Group votes."@en1
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