“Solving the pension problem”: Belgian pension funds call for further development of supplementary pensions | pension

PensioPlus clarifies that its petition is not directed against the statutory pension. “It's both a story and a story,” emphasized CEO Anne Verlinden. She pointed out that the government has no margin to increase the legal pension. The pension bill already amounts to 63.5 billion euros annually, compared to 48 billion euros in 2019. In the future, the number of retirees will increase even more, while the number of workers responsible for financing the system will decrease.

Moreover, the statutory pension is often not enough to maintain a good standard of living after retirement. For more than eight in ten civil servants and even three in ten civil servants, the statutory pension is too low to pay the nursing home bill. The sector says the supplementary pension would help bridge the gap with the last salary, but then more people would have to join and pay higher contributions.

Today, three-quarters of employees in our country do not receive a supplementary pension whose contributions exceed 3 percent of their total salaries. The average reserve earned in the second pillar now stands at €24,352, but on the other hand, half of the members have only saved less than €3,459. Women in particular are left behind.

PensioPlus therefore calls for a “long-term vision and growth path towards an overall minimum contribution of 3 percent of gross salary.” But this is said to also require legal certainty and quasi-financial stability.

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