EU Pension policy and financialisation: purpose without power?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article asks whether the EU’s pension policy promotes and achieves financialisation of old age security. Financialisation in this context means financial market integration that, in conjunction with pension reforms in member states, creates a market-based mode of governance for old age security. After an overview of how significant private pension funds have become in the EU, the article takes a most-likely case study of financialisation, the Pan-European Pension Product (PEPP), to see how successful the EU’s pension policy proved to be in establishing the PEPP. The findings suggest that EU policymaking in pensions tries to instrumentalise financial market integration for pension provision but this does not necessarily lead to financialisation of old age security. Market integration is a multi-faceted process of creating, emulating and correcting markets that obstructs a single-minded policy thrust like financialisation.