Erjavec said the party agreed with the basic tenets of the pension reform - tying pensions to contributions, and 40 years of service being the key criterion for retirement.
But it is concerned about whether introducing indicative individual pension accounts is truly just a way of improving transparency of whether the solution would undermine intergenerational solidarity. The party also wants to know how often pensions will be indexed to wages, according to Erjavec. Labour, Family and Social Affairs Minister Andrej Vizjak, who presented the reform bill to the party's executive committee, said that the outstanding issues would be subject to negotiations. "This is not a problem," he said.
He assured DeSUS that individual pension accounts would not undermine intergenerational solidarity, but acknowledged that the indexation of pensions "remains open" and would be subject to further discussion. DeSUS had left the previous coalition in 2008 over opposition to pension reform, but Erjavec noted that there was a fundamental difference between the two proposals: the previous government's proposal favoured age over years of service as a retirement condition. Moreover, the previous pension reform, which voters rejected in a referendum, had not collapsed because of DeSUS opposition but because it was not agreed with the unions. "Similarly, if this reform is not agreed with the unions, I doubt it can succeed considering the possibility of a referendum," according to Erjavec.
SOURCE: The Slovenia Times
