Proposition 51K2877

Projet de loi relatif aux pensions du secteur public.

General information ¶

Submitted by

PS | SP MR Open Vld Vooruit Purple Ⅰ

Submission date

Jan. 31, 2007

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

civil servant public administration civil service pension scheme survivor's benefit

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit PS | SP Open Vld N-VA MR FN VB

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Discussion ¶

March 15, 2007 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The Social Affairs Committee discussed this bill at three meetings. There was also a second reading of this bill. The first part deals with a number of changes relating to the rest and surrogacy pensions, in particular technical adjustments made at the request of the Court of Auditors or at the request of the departments, but which may also rely on a consensus of the trade unions represented in Committee A.

The second part, in Chapter III, is actually about a substantial change of the perequation, the legislation relating to pensions in the public sector.

There have been many interventions, Mr. Speaker, including from colleague D'hondt, colleague Cahay-André, colleague Bultinck, Mr. Delizée and myself. Ultimately, this bill was approved in the committee with nine votes for and one abstinence.

I have registered Mr Delizée, Mrs D'hondt and Mrs Turtelboom in the general discussion. Who is still writing in? Then I will begin with Mrs. D'Hondt, puis M. Delizée and then we will see where we stand. If everything goes well, we may be able to vote around 21:00 or shortly thereafter.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, this bill amends a number of provisions concerning public servants’ pensions.

We would like to remove any uncertainties and inaccuracies, for example by adjusting the table with the active services.

It is also good that other points are improved by the bill, such as the transfer of the pension obligations of local governments to preventive institutions.

There was also a number of harmonizations urgent. For example, the provisions on survivor pensions had to be adapted to the new guardianship scheme and the treatment of career breakage in contractual and civil servants had to be harmonised.

An important part concerns the change in the calculation of the perequation, which will now be done on the basis of baskets in which the pensions of a particular sector are grouped each time. In this way, extremes that occurred in the past – some retirees saw their pensions suddenly rise enormously, while others did not enjoy perequation for years – will be excluded. That is a good thing.

Positive is also that all kinds of conditional betting benefits will no longer be excluded from the calculation basis for the perecations, so that one can no longer bypass the fact that the betting increases also increase pensions. Every retired civil servant will receive a well-being pension.

That would be the case in the employee system. According to the summary report of the European Commission of February 2006 on adequate and sustainable pensions, Belgium is one of the countries with a higher risk of poverty for the elderly than for the whole population. Twenty-one percent of Belgian 65-year-olds are poor, while in the EU-25 it is only 18%.

I return to the bill. The report also stated that the text was created through social consultation. This is also a reason for CD&V to support the bill.

It has once again shown how important it is to conduct sound social consultation when one wants to change something about matters such as pensions.

Those who overlook the draft law and compare it with the original draft, can only be pleased that through the social consultation a number of important changes have been made to the original plans. I will name only a few.

Initially it was stipulated that increases in holiday fees would only be taken into account if it exceeded 92% of the bet. Today, however, the holiday fee is even lower. So the evolution to that 92% would have benefited only the active population, and not those who are already retired. Fortunately, this has been changed so that the programmed increases in the holiday fee will also benefit current pensioners, in particular those of education.

A second example of the way in which the social consultation has yet made significant additions to the original design is as follows. The original draft stipulated that BTK services would no longer count for the monetary antiquity, therefore no longer for the pension. Many people in BTK projects have been nominated afterwards. Anyone who has some experience at the local level knows this very well. In the years before, BTK’s usually did the same job as permanently appointed persons. I am therefore very pleased that, partly through the social consultation, that passage has disappeared and that BTK services will still, and therefore also in the future, be counted for the calculation of the pension, just like the contractual years performed before the fixed appointment.

It was also asked not to have conditional bet increases or additions that would not count for the perequation. From now on, that would normally no longer be possible, so also in this area, the social consultation has made a non-insignificant adjustment.

I now come to the point that it has also been the object in the committee, not of much discussion, but still of some wretchedness, at least on my part. In fact, what was not sufficiently socially consulted was an amendment by the majority. Or was it a government amendment, submitted by the majority? I do not know. But well, we know that phenomenon, it is every moment. There was an amendment that authorizes the King to deviate from the new rules of perecuating in the benefit or disadvantage of this or that group. That amendment may have come under pressure from certain stakeholders, but it was not discussed and agreed with all government trade unions.

The text signifies a weakening of the new uniformity and equal treatment introduced by the draft law in the calculation of perequation. I deeply regret that. Even though we are assured that this is not the intention, it still opens the door for arbitrary adjustment of the perequation for certain groups in the future. This is a dangerous amendment. Therefore, despite our positive vote for the bill, we could not approve the amendment anyway. I still have, until today’s plenary session, the hope, Mr. Minister, that the amendment will not be achieved or at least very much restricted by your statement, so that we can approve the whole draft law.

Mr. Minister, colleagues from the Social Affairs Committee, we can of course not remember the numerous present in our plenary session the funny but somewhere also painful incident at the vote. I had, of course, re-submitted my amendment on the pension calculation of the CLB staff, with which I have been traveling for years, and, wonder over wonder, my amendment was approved. In this way, the staff members of the CLBs would finally receive the same pension calculation as the other staff members of the education sector. Can you imagine a better career end than approving an amendment that has been taught for so long?

You may also know this from other committees. In such bills, the majority often put the voting arm on an automatic pilot, and that was therefore on an automatic pilot. It was yes, yes, yes, also for my amendment, until just before the final vote the minister had to come from behind his table with great courage to tell the majority that they probably voted wrong and that it could not be the intention of approving my amendment anyway. It is a pity for the staff of the clubs. We have applied the Rules of Procedure, Mr. President. The Rules of Procedure did not allow the vote to be repeated in the session. There are committees where the Rules of Procedure are applied. We met again the next day for the second reading. Then that amendment, unfortunately enough for the people who are employed in the CLBs, of course, made no chance anymore. For one day we were right. Sometimes you have to wait a lifetime to get a day right. This time it succeeded.

Mr. Minister, I deeply regret that during the discussion of this bill it became clear that during this legislature in this Parliament no longer will be submitted a bill for the introduction of a supplementary pension for the contractual staff of the government. However, it was written with so many words in the government agreement. It is a great disappointment. It has been registered in the government agreement, but there has been no draft in the last four years. We are losing very precious months while we have already lost so much time.

Mr. Minister, in the construction of supplementary pensions, the time in which one can build reserves is at least as important as the amount of the premiums deposited. The build-up of the reserves will have to begin at a moment when the aging is very close to the front door or has already entered.

Mr. Minister, no matter how good the present draft on public sector pensions and the components of the perequation may be, it should be my heart that it can no longer deal with a draft on supplementary pensions for the contracts in the public office, as too often in recent years, demonstrates the weakness of the government, not so much by what it does, because this draft is a good design, but rather by what it does not do, by what it fails to do, including the construction of supplementary pensions for contracts.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, during the eight years of purple, numerous opinions, manifests and interviews were filled with dreams, promises and visions. After eight years not only watching, but watching closely, I have found far too little of those dreams, promises and visions in laws and royal decrees.

I decide . Before a dream from a purple government agreement becomes a bill, it has almost become a nightmare.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to thank Mrs. Turtelboom, the rapporteur on this project, for her brief but precise oral report. As Ms. D'Hondt, I will say that this is a difficult but important matter. I will try not to be less positive than Mrs. D'Hondt on the whole project. It appears to be more reluctant to some amendments than to the overall philosophy of the project, at least in what it contains independently of supplementary pension issues.

During the debate in the committee, I began by reminding that when we talk about provisions concerning public sector pensions, we are talking about provisions on remuneration. It is the historical contract that the State passed with its officials, the deferred treatment. When addressing the issue of public sector pensions, this specificity must be taken into account. The peer-equation introduced by the law of 1969 is an integral part of this statute and that is what we will discuss in this debate.

The 1969 law on the equalization of pensions has not evolved since then but as it was highlighted in the debate in the committee, it is the State that has evolved, whose successive reforms have brought fundamental changes on the institutional level and make that today, there are hundreds of different statutes, thousands of barems serving as a reference for the equalization of public pensions. Services have disappeared, reforms have taken place such as the Copernic reform, the reform of the fonts, grades no longer exist. Over time, all this needed modernization, adaptation. This law has suffered the effect of time and institutional reforms.

Over the years and decades, it has been seen that public authorities have increasingly used legislative techniques to mitigate or cancel the potential effects on pensions of certain baremic increases. In some ways, the 1969 law was bypassed. In some sectors, grades have not been subject to adjustments, perecalation for a long time: some have not been re-adjusted for 16 years, which causes low public official salaries and small public sector services pensions to be seen in a pauperization. There are large social disparities between retirees depending on whether their grade at the time of retirement has been overrated or not.

It should also be said that we are now in a system that is very untransparent. We are in a categorical logic. As Ms. D'Hondt and other speakers have said, there was ⁇ a need to re-examine the system. The new system attempts to provide a response to the institutional evolution, the famous 15 baskets, more transparency in the system but also a sectoral solidarity not only between active agents and pensioners but also between pensioners themselves.

If the famous historical contract with the civil servants is not overturned, an evolution is observed because the reference will no longer be the evolution of the monetary status of the agent’s last grade; it tends to slide towards a kind of sector-specific well-being coefficient that will obviously be calculated on the basis of the increases in the maximum of the scales and the treatment supplements that no longer directly relate to the individual treatment of the civil servant.

Local authorities also talked about the feasibility and possible consequences of the new perecalation. Our attention was focused on the very specific situation of the local authorities of the different Regions where no one, to date, has yet managed to keep a reliable cadastre of the different bars applicable to members of their staff. The principle of local autonomy and the various situations covered by their activities naturally give rise to specific arrangements for each administration.

Regardless of the additional burden that the new system risks to create for the few municipalities that do not participate in a solidary pension scheme, a pensioner will be able to see his pension forecasted, even though the maximum of his baremic scale will not have evolved during the reference period.

In addition, local authorities subject to a management plan may be morally obliged to follow the processing developments driven by other local authorities. On the other hand, the pensioners of the most social administrations will be penalized because they will have to wait years before they may possibly have the full benefit of the increase in rates. That being said, we are well aware that removing some local authorities from law enforcement would mean creating an obviously unjustifiable discrimination between pensioners.

With regard to the majority amendment, the aim is indeed to allow, in some baskets and sectors that will wish to do so, to carry out a capture of the lowest pensions and thus make a system more solidary. This is an amendment that – I think – has been weighed, given that strict conditions must be met: it requires an opinion of the Technical Committee for Public Sector Pensions and the agreement of all parties. This means, Mrs D'hondt, that if all parties do not agree, this possibility will not be implemented.

The overall burden on the basket cannot be increased but, in some cases, it will be possible, on the basis of this consultation, to increase or reduce by up to a third the percentage of perequation for the categories of pension or survival pensions that the negotiators would designate.

To conclude, I would say that this is not an easy matter. It was ⁇ easier not to move, not to propose, even at the end of the legislature, a bill on the matter. It was easier to play immobilism than to try to evolve the mechanism by adapting it to the institutional realities of the country. The bill is still in place and will be put to the vote in a few minutes. It is a field in which there is always something to eat and drink, as they say. You can always find arguments in one way or another, even within trade unions. Sometimes, even within the same trade union organization, we are far from reaching unanimity.

This project is therefore the result of a subtle political balance and we will support it as such.

Mr. leader of the group, had Mrs. Turtelboom registered? You say no.

Madame Genot, you are the last speaker.

You will be speaking after the Parliament, Mr. Minister. Constitutionally, I cannot deny that. Personally, I would not refuse either.

Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I am not very familiar with the matter. However, I was intercepted by the multiple criticisms coming from the CGSP. I would therefore like to give you, Mr. Minister, the opportunity to answer this question and to disprove your arguments.

All partners acknowledge that the pension system needs to be reformed. Certain degrees had disappeared. A whole series of maneuvering to bypass the perecation had been implemented. In other words, the system had to be revised.

On the other hand, the project as it is presented to us today seems to present a number of problems and the main criticism relates to the loss of automaticity of perecations.

Initially, automation was theoretically saved, but limited. Now, with the amendment proposed by the SNCB, the social partners consider that the automaticity of perecalation is removed. The periods are prolonged. In addition, the Council of Ministers will have to examine any decision in the matter. According to the CGSP, it is really a pity that this amendment was accepted without concertation of all the actors.

Furthermore, a whole series of small pensions had not been fixed for years, mainly because the grades had disappeared. The CGSP regrets that a small increase in these pensions was not carried out before they were reintegrated into the system. Indeed, their level is very low. Getting them into the system is not enough to allow them to benefit from a more than deserved catch-up.

I come to another aspect: the survival pension. We have already seen some severe distortions in women’s pensions over the past few years. I was therefore somewhat concerned to find that previously, survival pension was calculated according to the scheme of the year of death of the person while according to the new system proposed, the calculation will be made from the scheme of the year of retirement of the person who opened the right to pension.

For survival pensions, this would have very negative consequences. It cannot be said that the beneficiaries of these pensions live extremely well. Yes, I know that, according to you, people should live a little and not go on vacation. I don't know if you meet retirees on the street. You would then realize that this question has nothing to do with going on holiday or undertaking major work in the house; it is only for them to get to pay for their medications, to offer a gift to their grandchildren, etc. This is the reality for the majority of pensioners.

I would like to know your opinion on the issue of survival pensions.

The CGSP conclusion is ⁇ dry given that it speaks of a socialist minister, since this union notes: "The CGSP unanimously condemned this project, considering it unacceptable and therefore did not propose any amendment." So I think your negotiation techniques have not yielded fruit. I hope you will review your method for the next time.

Thank you, Madame Genot. I will give the floor to Mr. The Minister of Pensions. This reminds me of the good weather, since I was its predecessor in 1980.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to climb the speaker. You say this is from before my time. The law of 1969 is indeed far ahead of my time, but 1969 is also my year of birth. That we can change them today for the first time, therefore, has some symbolism for me. It proves that everything that was made in 1969 is sustainable and can last long, but that it is also necessary to question things in time and once. This was also the case for the perequation.

We know, the existing system of perecation is imperfect. Its principle is defendable and I defend it, as I defend the system of welfare adjustments in the private sector, not yet as performing as that of the public sector. For years, in some cases, our existing peer-equation system has been diverted: officials still regularly – or irregularly – receive excellent pensions increases, while others, at other levels and in other services, had not experienced peer-equation for ten, fifteen or twenty years.

The causes of this are the complexity of the system, the evolution of the administrations still national, in 1969, towards administrations regionalized at various levels and made autonomous. This is how the system has gradually become complicated to the point of being made almost inapplicable or very easy to bypass for the authority who did not want to assume the financial burdens associated with it.

So if, for all clarity, I have taken the initiative to really change this system, then it is precisely why. This, by the way, happened primarily at the request of a series of social partners, who themselves have asked to come up with a more solidary, more effective, more efficient system of perequation. It provided a guarantee for a whole bunch of officials who are falling out of the boat today, often not the highest paid officials or the strongest levels, to be reintegrated in a clear and transparent way into the system of the peer equation. This is what we are trying to do with this system. Indeed, Mrs. D'Hondt, there has been a thorough discussion on this.

Madame Genot, although not everyone finally agreed with the proposed system, it was approved by the Committee A in which the public sector trade unions are represented. Although there was no unanimity, the agreement within the Committee A was sufficient.

Therefore, I think that we here indeed, Mr. Delizée said it, do not have an undisputed system, but rather a system that is undisputedly better than what is today and that in a much clearer and much more solidary way will ensure perequations in the coming decades in our civil servants.

Mr D'Hondt, I come to the amendment. It is not an amendment that came on my initiative. However, it does not, in itself, affect the system, to the extent that it does indeed allow to make a rearrangement within certain baskets and within the basket only, for the sake of clarity, only in favor of lower pensions. Indeed, it provides the possibility of doing some sort of “rattrappage” in some cases, as we do with the welfare adjustment that we have now done in the private sector in an initial phase.

Is it a system that involves risks? Eventually it may be so.

Is the system that can happen without consultation? No, because the mechanism provides very clearly that there must be a consultation, that there must be a recommendation, that the government cannot do this on its own initiative. If you ask me, my interpretation is at least parallel to that of the welfare adjustments in the private sector. This means doing a sort of one-time "rattrapage" in a first perecation exercise and then evaluating whether it is still necessary, and I hope not, to continue that system in the future.

I would like to return to your interpretation of the supplementary pensions of the contracts.

Mrs. D'Hondt wants to interrupt you for a moment.

It is about the explanation of the amendment, Mr. Minister.

First, it is not a certainty, but it is, of course, important that you declare here that it should actually be the intention, if the amendment or that text is applied, to limit it to one deviation from the general system as it will now apply to the perequation. However, you yourself immediately added it in one breath that it must then be evaluated. I would be more reassured if it really was a one-time opportunity to correct the “rattrapages” – as you call it.

Second, unless you tell me that I misread it, I find it even more important that, even if there is already a "rattrapage" or any other arrangement than that which is provided here for the application of the perequation as a general line, then there is no certainty that this will happen for the small or the lowest pensions in the public office. Will it happen to those who, due to circumstances, for years – which Mr. Delizée pointed out in his intervention – have not had perequation? As the amendment is now written, that one-time or multiple "rattrapage" can also be done for the highest pensions and for those who have ⁇ perequation until the last minute. Then I find it really very different from the spirit of the design.

I totally agree with you, Mrs. D'Hondt. In my opinion, this cannot in any way be the spirit of this amendment.

I can perfectly find myself in the concerns of a number of people who inspired the amendment. They note that the need for a possibility of adjustment for a number of very low pensions, which have been ignored in recent years, requires some flexibility in this system. I would find it entirely contradictory, both in the draft and in the amendment, if it were used to sustain the misstatements and the divergent growth that have arisen in the perequation in the past decades. I also count on the procedure that guarantees that there must be both an opinion from the social partners and a government decision, and I hope that none of the two is as crazy to do exactly the opposite of what this law serves for. For all clarity, since the first round will be under the next government, I can only tell you today what I think is the spirit of both the draft and the amendment.

I will then come to the discussion of the additional pension of the contracts. I think you are inflicting a little violence on the truth and the chronology. I share your concern about coming up with a system of supplementary pension for contracts. We also agreed at the same Committee A, which agreed on this draft, that we would immediately start discussions on that system of supplementary pension for contractual purposes. We also did this immediately. These discussions are full of work today.

In response to your question of whether we will be able to vote on this in Parliament, I said that this will depend on the speed with which we can reach an agreement with the social partners. After all, I want to have a thorough discussion on this project again, and I am also doing so. This will depend on the speed with which we will reach an agreement, the speed with which we can submit it to the Chamber, and the speed with which the Chamber can still handle it in this time shortly before the elections.

In any case, it is my ambition to come up with a text that gets the approval of Committee A and can be submitted to the Chamber. I can’t go back a millimeter. I can tell you that today we are closer to a supplementary pension for contracts than we have ever been in the past. As soon as the text will be submitted to Parliament, I will do my utmost to ensure that it will still be submitted for voting in this legislature. In any case, I hope that no one will return to an agreement of Committee A once it has been reached.

That is my first ambition, to which I will not step back. Rather, we will try to finish this in the fastest possible way. However, this is not a project that I write on my own. This presupposes a procedure of social consultation, which I want to follow correctly.

I have responded to the questions and comments.

I thank the committee members for the constructive way in which the debate on the draft was conducted, which indeed is not an obvious theme and not an obvious discussion. Together, we have created a project for the entire statutory civil servants that is a good thing and will lead to a more solidary and more social pension system for many civil servants.

I am confident that this finding will also be proven in the future.

My question is addressed to Mr. and Delicate.

Following the intervention of Ms. Genot, it is observed that there is no doubt a difference in sensitivity at the level of trade unions between the North and the South of the country. However, when Mr. Delizée submitted his last amendment in the committee, he indicated that this amendment had been agreed with the social organizations. But after the adoption of the text, we received letters from the public service unions.

I would like to know the feelings of Mr. We are now at the end of our parliamentary path. Does it feel that the fears of the trade unions are justified? Is he comfortable with all this at this stage?

Madame Genot, do you have a question on the same topic? Let me first answer Mr. and Delicate.

This is a debate between parliamentarians and the minister, to which it is up to answer questions. And I tell you, Mr. Drèze, that I am very comfortable. Consultations have taken place. Then the work in the committee was organized. Amendments have been submitted. I would like to clarify that this is the amendment of the majority. That there are contacts with representatives of trade union organizations, yes, it is certain. It is also found that this case does not have unanimity on the trade union level, including within the same trade union organization. After that, we need to find a balance. The text we voted for is one of them.

I support this amendment in its content, although it is not unanimous. It is our political responsibility to vote the text as it is.

I would allow myself to return a brief moment to Mrs. D'Hondt's speech concerning the spirit of the amendment. As it is written, it does not say that this evaluation or this retrieval will only take place once. Normally, every two years, this mechanism can be triggered. This is a possibility, which must be discussed between the government, in this case the future Minister of Pensions, and trade unions. If all parties do not wish or no longer wish to carry out this retrieval, it will no longer take place. However, the amendment does not limit it to a single intervention.

If, in a sector, all parties agree that significant recovery must take place for the benefit of a certain category of workers, low wages, or survival pension recipients, they have the possibility to do so. But it will require an assessment prepared by the trade unions and the future government.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister’s response and now Mr. Delizée’s response show that the amendment, like the rest of the draft, had to have been the subject of social consultation and coordination, so that it could have had the approval of the majority of the trade unions in Committee A. This was not the case with the amendment, and we know that.

First of all, I would like to reflect on what Ms. D'Hondt just said. An amendment that undermines the automaticity of perecalations really deserved to be discussed with all the trade unions and not only with one or the other sector. It was not a question of making unanimity, but rather of making a quasi-unanimity against itself; this poses a problem.

Secondly, I had a question about the new survival pension system. Previously, they were calculated from the year of death and in the new system, they will be calculated from the year of retirement of the partner who opened the right. For a man who retired in 1980, we will use the rate of 1980 and not that of the year of his death, for example 2000. I think this will be a very bad deal for those who benefit from these survival pensions. How do you justify this new system?

In my opinion, there is no really negative effect on the level of widow pensions. Furthermore, as you know, we have introduced in this project – but it is not a compensation – a system for widows: it allows them, especially those whose husband died prematurely, the possibility of cumulative survival pension and other benefits, including unemployment, illness, etc. This possibility did not exist at all before and constitutes a real improvement of the system.

Therefore, I do not believe that one can argue that the widows of public sector officials will have to suffer any negative effect from this project.

Mr. Minister, I confess not to be fully reassured with the "you can not say a priori only", while I was waiting for clear calculations. I hear that some will gain, those who can accumulate, but what about the widows who do not accumulate? Is it a deterioration of their situation?

The House is now sufficiently enlightened by our discussions and committee work.