Currency Board, Objectives, Problems and Tasks of the Pension Reform in Bulgaria

The study includes data, analyses and estimations for the public area – economic, demographic, social, political, etc. in Bulgaria and its development in the transition to market economy and the democratization of the public relations (1989 – 1999), which made inevitable the pension reform and the new Code for the obligatory public insurance (COPI), valid since 01.01.2000. It also includes characteristics of the suggested in 1999 pension reform and new three-column system for pension insurance and mostly of its first (basic) column. The study has formulations and reasons for its main objectives, principles and most significant concrete norms and mechanisms, on which at favorable public environment, speed and extent of realization of its main objectives and principles depends. The study has also identification and analyses of the main factors, on which depends the regaining of the trust in the new pension system, regaining the social justice in the distribution of the pension incomes, increase of the total level of the pensions and the pension protection and financial stabilization of the pension system in short-term, middle-term and long-term perspective. The publishing of the study allows the interested current and future research fellows, specialists and other readers: • To get acquainted more profoundly with the main motives of the suggested and confirmed by the Parliament at the end of 1999 new model and architecture of the system for pension insurance, with its main objectives and principles, concrete norms and mechanisms, etc. • To build or add to their own criteria and estimations for the reasoning and effectiveness of the pension reform, for the potential and really revealed achievements and weaknesses of the valid since 01.01.2000 COPI, for necessary additional discussions and corrections in some of the concrete norms and mechanisms of COPI and their parameters – in order to fasten the realization of the main objectives of the mension reform: 1. Regaining the social justice in the pension insurance. 2. Increasing the size and the level of the pension and the pension protection. 3. Financial stabilization of the system. 4. Fastened social integration of Bulgaria with the European Union in this extremely important and publicly significant area of the social policy and practice – the pension insurance.