On Monday there will be a demonstration against the not yet known pension plans of a government that has not yet been formed. It would be better to take to the streets against the Pensions Ministers who have failed to implement the necessary reforms in recent years.
After the police, soldiers and magistrates, railway and teaching staff are now also opposing a pension reform, as leaked from one of the many so-called super notes from formateur Bart De Wever (N-VA). Even though it is unclear whether the version of the leaked supernote will ever be implemented. It is even uncertain whether a government will ever be formed by the parties that have been negotiating for more than 200 days.
It is currently the civil servants who oppose the plans. Civil servants’ pensions are on average higher than those of employees and the self-employed. The civil servants say they are entitled to this, as a form of deferred pay.
The leaked plans show that civil servants would have to make some concessions in the long term. The calculation of the civil servants’ pension would also be brought more in line with that of employees and self-employed persons.
The salary for the last ten years of the career is now taken as the starting point for the calculation of the civil servant pension. For an employee, the salary is taken into account over the entire career. And everyone will earn less at the beginning of their career than at the end, so a calculation based on the entire career is more disadvantageous than if only the last ten years are taken into account. They want to change that, for civil servants they would like to look at the last twenty years. This would then be systematically increased to forty years from 2045.
On top of the index
They would also like to put an end to the extra increases that civil servants’ pensions can enjoy. Like all benefits, all pensions are linked to the index. If the lifespan increases, pensions also increase. They are automatically increased by 2 percent if the pivot index is exceeded.
In addition to this indexation, statutory pensions will be increased by 2 percent for employees and self-employed people who retired exactly five years ago. Those who retired in 2020 will receive this increase this month.
There is a special and extra advantageous system for civil servants. Civil servants’ pensions are also linked to the index, but are not increased by 2 percent after five years. They are adjusted every two years (always in a few years, so again this year) to the remuneration of civil servants still in service. So for example: with every collective labor agreement wage increase in education, the teachers’ pension increases along with it, on top of the index.
That extra adjustment is what is called ‘perequation’ in the jargon. The result is that the pensions of civil servants are rising more than those of employees and the self-employed. That would end now.
Tangle
Everyone now knows that a pension reform is inevitable, because our pensions are financially and socially unsustainable, the differences between the pensions of civil servants, employees and the self-employed are too great. Moreover, as the example of equalization illustrates, our pensions are a tangle of exceptional regimes in which even a pension specialist sometimes gets lost.
Of course, Professor Herman Matthijs (UGent and VUB) is right in an opinion piece in Knack writes that a 360-degree approach is needed to really reform pensions: not only the pension of civil servants must be taken into account, it is about the entire pension system as it is organized in our country.
And of course you cannot introduce pension reform for people who will retire tomorrow or in a few years. A pension reform must be announced a long time in advance, so that everyone can prepare for it.
Old age
Everyone saw today’s problems coming decades ago. A quarter of a century ago, in 2001, the Study Commission on Aging was established to calculate the budgetary and social consequences of aging. Every year she produced thick reports pointing to rising healthcare and pension expenditures.
These reports showed that pension reform was inevitable. In 2013, a Pension Reform Commission was established, which provided scenarios for pension reform. Nothing came of it, except endless bickering and tug-of-war. We have now reached the point where pensions threaten to become unaffordable in the foreseeable future: more and more Belgians are enjoying a pension for longer and longer.
The tragedy is that we have known since the beginning of the century that a serious reform of our pensions is needed in order to be able to give everyone a more or less humane pension. Reforms that, as mentioned, should be announced decades earlier, so that everyone knows where they stand in their old age. That didn’t happen.
Ministers
Since the turn of the century, Belgium has had nine Pensions Ministers: Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit), Bruno Tobback (Vooruit), Christian Dupont (PS), Marie Arena (PS), Michel Daerden (PS), Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD), Alexander De Croo (Open VLD), Daniel Bacquelaine (MR) and Karine Lalieux (PS). Socialist ministers were responsible for about 17 years, and they were liberal for nine years.
Instead of demonstrating on Monday against the not yet known pension plans of a government that has not yet been formed, it would be better to demonstrate against the failure to implement the well-known necessary pension reform by the well-known responsible ministers.
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