According to reports emerging from a conference in Berlin, the German government has no plans to make corporate pensions contributions compulsory.
Investment and Pensions Europe (IPE) reports that the government is confident about corporate pension provision in Germany in the wake of the Riester reforms of 2001. These reforms included a raft of concessions designed to boost uptake of corporate pensions.
The government minister for social affairs, Heinrich Tiemann, indicated that this had been achieved: The exemptions were always intended to, initially, boost demand for corporate pensions in Germany. This has now been accomplished…now, if the exemptions are removed from 2009, the government is still confident that corporate pensions in Germany face a bright future, the minister said in comments cited by IPE’s online edition.
Uptake of corporate pensions among employees in Germany has grown from 38% in 2002 to roughly 60% now, the report says.