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The proposals were made by the Association Française de la Gestion financiére (AFG) in a white paper published last week on expanding retirement savings in France.
It housed its call for cross-border pension funds under the heading of strengthening occupational pensions in France, especially collective company pension savings schemes.
These go by the acronym PERCO (plan d’épargne retraite collectif).
The AFG said a European pillar should be added to the PERCO to allow companies to manage pension plans from France for all European employees.
It said this required creating a vehicle compatible with the EU pension fund legislation, the IORP Directive, and that this could be achieved under the Sapin II law.
Laure Delahousse, deputy director general at AFG, said the idea was to create a new type of IORP-compliant pension vehicle asset managers could use to offer their clients a way to manage defined contribution plans more effectively in different European countries in a single pension fund.
“The Sapin law provides for the creation of such a pension fund via ministerial order, so no new law would be needed,” she said.
The lack of a universal pensions saving product for multinational companies with a mobile workforce and employees across Europe has also been remarked on by Jean Eyraud, president of the French institutional investor association Af2i.
Download the White Paper "Retirement savings" (in French)