Brussels

OK, back to Starbucks for reliable WiFi!

The meetings in Brussels were extraordinary.  The European Commission (The Executive Arm of the EU) has a team of talented professionals who put together a regular report on European retirement systems and apply a gender lense to the idea of "fairness".  They kindly spent time with me, shared their data and their knowledge.  It has given me a great deal to think about as we begin a process of examining the system in Australia.  Of course, while I was in Brussels we got a new PM.  It was really interesting to hear how that was reported and then discussed from an overseas perspective, more than once I had to explain how this could happen and more than once we were compared to Italy, good coffee aside I think this might be a little unfair!

One focus of the next report release from the European Commission will be the gender fairness of retirement age.  The group makes recommendations about using this lever as a means of ensuring a consistent approach to the financial viability of social schemes but also examines the impact of this on different genders.

Their data was fascinating but so too was the process by which legislation is proposed through the Commission.  I was completely distracted by how the whole of Brussels seems to run on these type of reports being generated, in the hope that they impact legislation.
Having come from a conference of industry professionals where there was a lot of high level discussion about the need for one European pension solution to meeting with the data professionals who are completely entrenched in the detail of the different systems it was really obvious that there is a huge gulf between the parties.  Many believe this will be bridged by moving to a defined contribution system like ours - of course that would solve a portability issue but probably open up a tax arbitrage one!  I do wonder though if our system is to be replicated how do the Europeans hold on to the premise of fairness?  How do they account for time out of the workforce and what will become of their robust social pillars?

More to come ...!