PhD Defense: Perspectives of EU Pension Law to facilitate worker mobility and sustainability of pensions

Elmar Schmidt will defend his dissertation on EU Pension Law at Utrecht University on 12 October 2020. It is entitled: Perspectives of EU Pension Law to facilitate worker mobility and sustainability of pensions.

Summary

Occupational pension systems throughout the EU are under pressure due to developments such as demographic ageing, the consequences of successive economic crises and a low interest rate environment. Another development is the increasing mobility across borders of workers and the question whether the nationally-oriented pension systems of the EU Member States can do enough to facilitate such worker mobility.

In response to these challenges, both the Member States themselves and the EU legislator have acted on several fronts. Although regulating pension systems is still for the most part a national prerogative, the EU has adopted legislation that is meant to use the advantages of the EU’s Single Market. For pensions, the Single Market can allow for more opportunities for specialisation, more international risk-sharing, a more efficient allocation of capital, as well as greater labour mobility by removing obstacles caused by pension systems and greater opportunities for economies of scale.

This dissertation assesses the EU’s legislative action in the field of occupational pensions – notably the so-called IORP II Directive – from the perspective of pension scheme members. It does this by evaluating this legislation through the lens of its use of the single market to the benefit of scheme members and its contribution to the removal of pension-related obstacles to worker mobility. It also assesses the Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP) and its potential to rectify some of the weaknesses of EU law in the second-pillar.