Political pension talk show, or would you prefer good lawmakers?

Column by Nick van de Sande - Korpershoek

Team Policy

The parliamentary elections will be held in March 2021. For those active on or around the political square kilometer in The Hague, the election fever has been rising for months. But a fiery election debate about retirement on a talk show sometime in the next few months on prime time is unlikely to happen. Considering the importance of expeditious implementation of the pension agreement based on solid legislation, that is a good thing.

After a decade of consultations and negotiations, the cabinet and social partners managed to reach consensus last summer on the details of the pension agreement. Most political parties in the middle have now embraced the pension agreement to a greater or lesser extent in their draft election programs. Even 50PLUS seems to have given up its opposition to the accord and would like to be involved again in the transition to the new pension system. In this context you can once again distinguish yourself as a pension spokesperson in the House of Representatives.

So what do you do then? As a standing committee for Social Affairs and Employment, you organize round table discussions about the pension agreement that last one and a half days. For which MPs can invite experts as they see fit. So that there is something for everyone and as a politician you can still put yourself in the spotlight. And so it happened on November 4 and 24.

As many as 21 representatives of the national pension society gave an appearance in the House of Representatives spread over two days in eleven short successive blocks. Among them, various people directly involved in the pension agreement. But also people who have been more on the sidelines to date, and who therefore passionately seized the opportunity to storm the national political stage to put forward their own (sometimes controversial) thoughts.

What was special about this was that key players in the realization of the pension agreement such as FNV and VNO-NCW were not even invited at first. Gijs van Dijk (PvdA) took care of this at the last minute - rightly so.

During the round table discussions, every Member of Parliament was able to collect his or her right from someone on some pension aspect. In order to especially appeal to their own supporters. Often they resorted to well-known hobbyhorses to show whether or not this or that person had brought in something for his supporters, or whether someone's expertise would not give cause to do things completely differently.

The "result": a self-sustaining 660-minute surrogate political retirement talk show. The neutral viewer - not helped by the much used pension jargon - was mainly confused and exhausted. Given the cacophony shown, you would almost doubt whether a historic pension agreement has been concluded at all.

On the other hand, the MPs cannot be blamed for wanting their own "election show". After all, for years they have been forced to observe the slow progress of the polder towards the agreement, mainly from the wings.

In addition, it is - of course - important for the House of Representatives to study the new pension system. During the round table discussions, for example, explicit attention was paid to implementation aspects. In other words, is what is in the pension agreement feasible and practicable? Legitimate questions that testify to the House's progressive insight. In the past, implementation aspects have remained (heavily) underexposed in other legislative processes. With dire consequences for large groups of individuals, as we have seen especially in the childcare allowance affair.

It is to be hoped that the further elaboration of the pension agreement and its transposition into legislation and regulations will proceed smoothly - despite a possibly lengthy formation period towards the next cabinet. In which the House of Representatives no longer searches with a political magnifying glass for so-called mutually dividing differences of opinion. However, based on diligent analyzes and legislative work in the spirit of the pension agreement, the House contributes to sound and enforceable pension legislation.

Because timely attention to legislative quality and implementation aspects is crucial for the creation of a pension system that can gain the trust of pension participants. For them, the millions of participants, most of whom have no idea what the new system means for them, the round table discussions shown in recent weeks were unfortunately of little (show) value.

1 See also the position paper by Pieter Omtzigt (CDA), published on 7 November this year, "The House of Representatives and the Implementation, a difficult combination", written to the parliamentary committee of inquiry for implementation services. (link)