The Economic Crisis and the Solidarity of Social Insurance Systems

In the first section we will briefly introduce the main impact of the global crisis on Romanian macroeconomics, financial markets with special focus on the pension systems, as well as the outlook of the international rating agencies and of the financial institutions regarding the reform solutions. The second section tackles the solidarity dimension of pension schemes, i.e. concepts like inter-generational, intra-generational, gender, and fiscal solidarity. The third section describes the pension reform measures tackled during the crisis providing also concise country profiles in CEE. These measures were mostly envisaged to mandate later retirement, reduce the deficit of Pillar I, change the pension indexation rules, eliminate privileged pension rights for special groups of workers, and improve benefits. The last section is to conclude with some policy implications.