The European Commission is throwing its weight behind the development of a European personal pensions market, with commissioner Jonathan Hill saying it was one of the areas it was prioritising as part of its capital markets union work this year.
In a report, the commission said it would launch a consultation, before the summer, “as the first step in evaluating the case for a policy framework to establish a voluntary market for European personal pensions”. It is also planning to carry out a study on the fiscal and regulatory approaches that support the development of personal pensions.
His comments were made in the context of an update on the Commission’s CMU project, with the Commission today publishing its first CMU status report, as well as a 2016 edition of its Economic and Financial Stability and Integration Review (EFSIR).
A European private pensions market can help to address the retirement challenges associated with Europe’s ageing population but it also has a role to play in developing capital markets, Hill said. “The bigger the private pensions sector, the deeper the capital markets,” he added.
In its 2016 stability and integration review, the Commission analysed how private pension funds and public pension reserve funds could contribute to the objectives of the CMU, saying the results suggest that developing private pension saving may be a “promising avenue to explore”.
Hill reiterated comments made by others at the Commission that a European personal pension market would complement rather than replace state and occupational pensions.
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