Complementary reforms? “Important that country comes out of its little retangle”

A margin of an event in Bragança, and when asked about the conclusions of the study of the working group created by the government, which suggested the adoption of professional automatic membership pension plans, Álvaro Santos Pereira considered it important that the country leave its “retangolozinho” and see “what is happening elsewhere in the world and elsewhere in Europe as well”.

The governor recalled that in the 1990s, in Sweden and Denmark, “there was a great reform of the pension system, of social security, to allow people to have better pensions at the end, when they have just worked”.

These countries “bet on strengthening people’s savings mechanisms, so that people can then, regardless of their risk profile”, complement the public pension system, with something that can increase their savings, also said in the margin of opening in the city of Bragança a traveling face-to-face service of the BdP.

Santos Pereira also pointed out that countries like Germany are also thinking of following these examples and discussing a “social security system reform to allow for exactly this complementarity at pension level, to increase, to strengthen people’s pensions when they retire”.

“ We are living longer and longer, which is great, but we also have to finance this increase in life,” he said, “it is important, once and for all, to stop ideology and see what other countries are doing and learn good practices and international best practices.”.

The working group created to study the sustainability of Social Security, whose report was presented on Tuesday, defended the adoption of professional pension plans for automatic membership, which allow the resignation.

According to the group coordinator, Jorge Bravo, this measure would be important “to supplement the public pension, not to replace it”, he defended in the presentation of the report today in Lisbon.

In question are “retirement savings vehicles, in which eligible workers are entered by default when a contract of employment is concluded or for those already in existence, automatic registration is made, and are eligible for the system, but they always keep the option of, not wanting to participate, exercising a waiver clause”.