The EU’s Regulatory Commitment to a European Harmonized Pension Product (PEPP): The Portability of Pension Rights vis-à-vis the Free Movement of Capital

摘要

European demographic structure and age composition are currently in a state of flux—lifeexpectancy has increased, fertility rates have dropped, and baby-boomers have reachedretirement age. The implications of these changes, coupled with the fragmented marketfor personal pension products throughout the EUare vast and call for close scrutiny of therelationship between financial and pension markets.This article examines the current regulatory efforts aimed at creating a Pan-EuropeanPersonal Pension Product (PEPP). In doing so, it pursues two primary objectives: firstly,it seeks to explain the relevance of a European harmonized pension product to the overallconcept of the single market; and secondly, it aims to explore the looming regulatorychallenges stemming from the portability of social and pension rights. This is done byelaborating upon established lawand economics scholarship on capitalmarkets, includingthe Legal Theory of Finance developed by Katharina Pistor. By assessing the costs facedby prospective pensioners against the benefits of legislative harmonization (and otherpolicy-related alternatives), from both a normative perspective as well as a positive one,this article attempts to make a case for an effective and sustainable governance response.The article ultimately seeks to provide a well-balanced, albeit modern outlook to theregulatory endeavours that have more recently been made applicable to the EU personalpensionmarket in virtue of the creation of the PEPP and the wide-ranging effects of suchreforms on law, finance, and society.