Vanhanen wants minimum guaranteed pension for all Finns

PM hopes all parties will support proposal

print this

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) wants all Finns to get a guaranteed pension in the future. As Vanhanen sees it, the monthly sum should be at least EUR 650.
      In Vanhanen’s model, any room to manoeuvre in the matter should be focused on state retirement pensions and smaller work pensions.
     
“I expect every party to take a position on the matter of guaranteed pensions in the next Parliamentary elections. My strategy is that the stand of each party should be positive. Nobody would have the nerve to oppose the idea. The guaranteed pension would be significant for a very large number of low-income people”, Vanhanen says.
      Finland has 650,000 people who live below the poverty line as defined by the European Union. Of this group, 180,000 are pensioners.
      The government-appointed SATA committee is currently working on a proposal for overall reform of social security. The group, comprising dozens of experts, is scheduled to put forward its first proposals to the government later in the autumn.
      Vanhanen says that the matter of guaranteed pensions is the only issue in which he has offered advice to the SATA committee. “There are considerable political tensions linked with it, and it is best that work on the matter should begin early.”
     
Vanhanen would like to spread the financing of the pension reform over several years, and says that the thrust of the process should be on the next government term.
      Vanhanen wants to deal with issues related to other low-income people already in the present term, according to the recommendations of the SATA committee.
      Vanhanen promises improved benefits. For instance, it has been years since there have been any significant increases in basic unemployment benefits and income supplements.
      “In the lower income brackets, the issue is, above all, that we should improve benefits and not weaken them. The central factor is to make the benefits a logical whole, so that additional earned income would genuinely amount to additional income. Our system unfortunately has many characteristics, in which increased income causes a rapid decline in housing subsidies, for instance.”
     
“With the SATA committee we are trying to create a comprehensive system, in which no such traps exist”, Vanhanen says. According to the Prime Minister, “precision measures” are to be used to improve the lot of the poor.
      He gave no more details on measures to be taken, but he emphasised that “carrots, and not sticks” would be used to achieve the goals.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Parties in Parliament differ sharply on future of income supplements (19.8.2008)

Links:
  Social protection reform – SATA (PDF file)

Helsingin Sanomat