He is the man who turned against the pension plan of his own party NSC. Because of him, employees and pensioners receive no consent to the transition to the new pension system. And now, outgoing Minister Eddy van Hijum of Social Affairs is full of people who are just as critical of the new pension system as party founder Pieter Omtzigt and NSC MP Agnes Joseph.
But on this NSC evening about pensions, Tuesday in Rotterdam, Van Hijum is not only there as a minister, who has to defend the new pension system, but also as the intended party leader of the party. And in that role he must convince the room and potential voters that he is just as driven as Omtzigt and Joseph to improve the pension system.
Especially now that not only has Omtzigt left, but Agnes Joseph also announced on Thursday that he was not eligible for re -election as a member of the House of Representatives.
‘Lively discussion’
Together with Joseph, Van Hijum takes in this packed room a report receiving the NSC scientific office, with plans to make the new pension system more buyer. A safer theme than the right of consent, about which Joseph clashed hard with Van Hijum. In a parliamentary debate, she said that the minister with his objections to her proposal is “fooling the population.”
Now NSC has found a subject where Van Hijum and Joseph are on the same side. In April, after asking Joseph, the minister promised to find out how the purchasing power in the new pension system can be improved. He expects “around the summer,” he says in the room. Van Hijum hopes that this report will lead to “a lively discussion.”
NSC has been said for some time that the pension benefit cannot keep up the rising prices in the new system. Incidentally, this hardly happened in the old system. The NSC scientific office had pension expert Henk Bets proposals to improve this.
‘Medenkstand’
With his adjustments, says Bets, the pension benefit can rise much more often with inflation. Among other things because there is more risky investment for pensioners. And because the pension benefit is never increased more than inflation. Possibly money that remains is saved for later years, to increase the chance that even then inflation can be kept.
Joseph hopes that the pension sector will be in ‘De Medenkstand’, she says in Rotterdam. When she defended her proposal for the right of consent, she often complained that pension funds, experts, the Council of State and supervisors were so busy criticizing her concrete plan that they ignored her principle point.
If you want a higher pension, that money must come from somewhere
Even now there are critical questions. Pension experts wonder who will be presented with the bill from a perpetrator pension. That is not clear enough in the report presented now, says Bas Werker, professor of pension management and risk management (Tilburg University).
If you read the NSC report, this plan seems to have hardly any disadvantages. Author Henk Bets calculated for various pension funds or their benefits can keep up with inflation in the coming twenty years, in two thousand different economic scenarios. With pension fund ABP, according to him, the chance is 50 percent that the benefits in the new system can keep up with inflation. With his adjustments, that chance would rise to almost 80 percent.
Bets mentions one important downside: the chance that the pension benefit will be reduced also increases. This is due to the extra investment risk. Without his adjustments, according to him, there is a 5 percent chance of a reduction, with the adjustments, that chance becomes almost three times as high: 14 percent.
The whole story
Nevertheless, professor Werker wonders whether this is the whole story. He believes that the NSC report is not clear enough about how the lusts and the burdens are divided. “If you want a higher pension,” he says, “then that money must come from somewhere.” Does this proposal, for example, lead to more pension money being redistributed from employees to pensioners?
Whatever worker lacks in the report: if there are pension reductions, do they become much greater due to the extra investment risk?
By receiving this report together with Agnes Joseph, Eddy van Hijum seems to show that he wants to work as much as they are just as hard for pension improvements as she is. Van Hijum has even canceled a reception at the NATO summit for it. But on the evening in Rotterdam it also becomes visible how different the two are.
Feasibility
Where Agnes Joseph is firm and wants to make it a hurry, Van Hijum takes a more reluctant way and he mentions nuances. “You can raise expectations for better purchasing power,” he says, “but is there also a bill?” Van Hijum wants to do this ‘carefully’. And he wants the political choices not to make this alone, but together with trade unions and employers.
In the coming years, pension funds are still too busy with the transition to the new system, so this kind of adjustments will come to Van Hijum afterwards. “Extensability,” he says, “is also an important criterion of good governance.”
Can Van Hijum convince voters that he has the same critical view of the pension system as Omtzigt and Joseph? “There is sometimes discussion about the things we didn’t always agree,” says Van Hijum, pointing his hand to Joseph. But they both find purchasing power for the elderly ‘crucial’. “We will really get started with that.”
Joseph, with a smile: “First see, then believe, Eddy.”
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