Pissarides’ Committee proposal on the transformation of the supplementary State pensions’ scheme
The Pissarides’ Committee aims to provide a solution to the State pensions’ fiery problem, by enhancing the credibility of the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORPs), so that the latter will be able to operate as insurance companies and be supervised on a unified European level. The Committee aims to take advantage of the popularity that IORPs have gained in other countries (with the exception of Greece, albeit our country stands on the top of the list of countries facing problem with their pensions system). The Committee opted for this way of providing a solution to the pensions’ problem, instead of achieving this through the public pensions scheme which often leads to a dead-end. In 2016, when the new supervisory legislation for insurance companies was implemented (Solvency II) and the rules aimed at guaranteeing the solvency/governance of insurance companies were strengthened to an unprecedented extent, at the same time, the IORPs Directive, encompassing provisions of similar nature yet stricter, was harmonised respectively. In this way, the Commission intended to combine the high credibility of a private enterprise, with a non-profit and non-competitive element within the EU, in order to strengthen the culture of ‘individual responsibility’ regarding the supplementation of the pensions provided by the various public schemes.
