PhD student: Mr P.J.T. Mertens

Promotor: Mrs Dr A.H.H. Bollen-Vandenboorn

Duration: 1/10/2020 - 30/11/2022

Abstract:

The labour market is changing and will continue to do so through digitisation and robotisation. An increasingly growing group of workers qualifies as non-standard. On the other hand, the importance of work-related pensions is increasing due to, among other things, ageing. Most pension systems are designed according to the Pillars of the World Bank of 1994 and regulated to the situation at the labour market of that time or even earlier. Regulation is based on the pension product, the actors behind those products and closely linked with the employment relationship or labour classification. Therefore, systems are regulated for the typical worker, which means that the atypical labour market has to deal with different pension rules and also faces pension gaps. The European Pillar of Social Rights and the subsequent Council Recommendation of 8 November 2019 on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed (2019/C 387/01) qualify adequate pensions as a fundamental right. In this respect, pension systems should cover non-standard workers formally (give them the right to participate) and effectively (grant adequate possibilities). Therefore there is a need for a focus on the pension outcome, instead of on the pension provision itself. The demand is increasing socially and scientifically, but stays unsolved until today. This leads to the research question: How can pension systems be adapted to the non-standard labour market through tier-focussed regulation and facilitation?. By means of functional comparative law and empirical qualitative research, this research aims to develop a tier-based legal pension framework, facilitating the work-related pension for non-standard workers within a multi-pillar pension system.