On Friday 12 June, the government, trade unions and employers in the Netherlands reached an agreement to finalise the pension reform, the broad outlines of which had already been agreed a year earlier. The agreement has yet to be submitted to the organisations' members. Should social partners confirm their agreement with the compromise, the country’s government is expected to quickly adopt the draft law and submit it. The details of the agreement’s text are not known, but it should allow for the introduction of a new model for the second pillar of the pension system, which is based on pension funds set up at sector or company level and which have suffered greatly as a result of ECB interest rate policy. The aim is that the future model should be more in line with economic and financial developments.
If adopted by parliament, the new system will be implemented in 2026. However, it has been stated that companies and funds will be able to begin making modifications in 2022. The agreement reached on Friday evening sets out in greater detail how a future model for a funded second pillar pension system would operate. In June 2019, these same players agreed in principle to a reform of this second pillar to come to the aid of pension funds that are struggling due to the ECB’s interest rate policy,
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