New Challenges of Globalization in Pension Systems

After many years in which the social problems have been treated as an attribute of each state’s internal politics, the beginning of the third millennium marks the onset of a concentrated effort to reform the social security systems in most of the world’s states. For pension systems, the greatest common challenge is the attenuation of the demographic pressure, whose effect – on medium and long period of time – consists in the depreciation of financial sustainability of public systems and in accentuating the discrepancy between the benefits received from the public system and retired workers necessary of financial resources. In the context of European Union’s state members, the legislation on the people’s liberty and mobility domain implies the creation of a social security basic (minimal) system, which also regards aspects of pension benefits extraterritoriality. Meanwhile, the free circulation of services principle generates new problems regarding state border supervision. The last economical-financial crisis proved that, although the diversity principle allows each state member to decide on the pension system most agreeable, a certain series of common guidelines cannot be eluded, like the ones regarding investment regulation, the risk-based approach of supervising or the coordination of tax systems.