“Automatically, you will be included in the pension funds if you work. If you don’t want that, you have to consciously opt out.” Currently, she said, people could opt into a workplace pension, but inertia means few do.
“The assumption is that the inertia will also work the other way around,” EIOPA’s chief said, meaning few people would opt out. Where it is in place, the mechanism works and leads to more people saving through their jobs for their retirement, she said.
The idea is to have “something that is also available for people who are self-employed or who are gig workers, to ensure that also they can save for later,” she added.
Ultimately national governments must launch such reforms, and the topic of pensions is politically explosive.
François Bayrou’s French government lost the support of the Socialists when workers and employers failed to find an agreement on pension reforms. This summer, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested that young people save for their retirement, triggering a backlash from trade unions in defense of the state pension system.
How much is at stake? In Germany workplace pensions amount to €267 billion, whereas in Sweden — a country with one-eighth the population of Germany but where almost everyone has a pension fund — workplace pension savings amount to €516 billion, or 92 percent of GDP.