Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, to start with, I wish to thank all the parties concerned for their excellent levels of cooperation in achieving what is a constructive solution. Commissioner Bolkestein and those officials reporting to him, as well as the rapporteur, Mr Othmar Karas, have done a magnificent job in particular. In addition, I would like to say to my friend, Othmar, that the Republic of Austria has reportedly overcome the difficult challenges of its history through a remarkable ability to establish consensus and find solutions to benefit all parties. I think with the work he has done with regard to this directive Othmar has shown he has the important qualities needed by someone who is influential in society. Ensuring the existence of retirement provision will be one of the main political challenges of the EU Member States in the years to come. To address this challenge, however, we have a difficult message for the people of Europe. We must work for a longer period of time but at the same time the pension we receive from statutory occupational retirement schemes will be smaller than before. It will certainly sound like a kamikaze mission to any politician but it is nonetheless inevitable. The status quo is not an option. Although the Member States have the main responsibility for retirement provision we at Union level can implement measures to help promote retirement schemes by creating a sustainable basis for financing them. This directive on the activities of institutions for occupational retirement provision will create a legislative framework for Europe-wide action and will be one of the measures needed to defuse the pensions bomb. The directive will encourage the development of retirement schemes that are financially durable, provide companies with the capital they need through investment, and meet the needs of individuals that vary from one to another more effectively than statutory systems do. This will be especially true on the day we make headway with decisions on taxation. The directive will, on the one hand, promote the development of European financial markets and, on the other, benefit employees, who will profit from a more efficient and more transparent investment policy regarding their pensions. It took 15 years to establish common EU laws. The EU citizen has long been able to benefit from local social and health services in another Member State. Furthermore, there has been common legislation in existence now for years applying to institutions providing personal pension insurance. The differing views among Member States on this subject, however – something we are discussing today – held up for too long this directive, which hopefully we will adopt in tomorrow’s plenary debate. The directive now leaves the social partners in the Member States with a free hand to choose how to organise comprehensive voluntary retirement provision. This is a reasonable European compromise considering the differences that exist among pension systems in the Member States. Our negotiations were at times both very intensive and intense, but I believe that we will be satisfied with the end result. The most important thing was that we avoided possibly having to resort to the conciliation procedure.

Political group: PPE-DE