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Fritz von Nordheim, principal administrator for the social protection and inclusion division at the Directorate General for Employment, expressed his surprise at the number of Member States requesting feedback. The principle of country-specific recommendations forms part of the Commission's Europe 2020 agenda – now merged with the Growth and Stability Pact – and mirrors policies outlined in the White Paper that countries and social partners would receive financial support to investigate designs for "cost-effective" supplementary pension schemes. "Sixteen Member States have received country-specific recommendations on their pension systems – some of them are quite radical and very intrusive", von Nordheim said.
Pensions minister, Steve Webb, highlighted cooperation with other Member States on common issues such as longevity as one of the positives of the EU. "We've started moving on state pension age and are looking at what we call 'more automatic mechanisms' for raising state pension ages", he said.
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