Economic Policy Committee’s Ageing Working Group - Belgium: Country Fiche 2014 [ REP_COUNTRYFICH2014 - 11/12/2014]

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For the sixth time since 2001, the EPC Working Group on Ageing Population (AWG) has performed long-term economic and budgetary projections aimed at assessing the impact of ageing population. The last “Ageing Report” to date was published in 2012. The 2015 edition, which will be released in spring 2015, will present projections which have been endorsed in February 2015 by the EPC.

The projections of public pension expenditure are worked out at national level – by the Federal Planning Bureau in the case of Belgium – in the framework of the assumptions of the AWG, while the projections of the other age-related public expenditure items are worked out by DG ECFIN Services. These public pension expenditure projections are submitted to a peer review process, on the basis of a technical so-called national “country fiche”. These “country fiches” are released by the EC jointly with the “Ageing Report” itself, but the EC has kindly authorized FPB to use the “Belgium: Country Fiche 2014” for national purposes and to publish it before the release of the “Ageing Report 2015”.

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Collective publication

A : Author, C : Contributor

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Reports

The report presents the work carried out by the Federal Planning Bureau in its fields of expertise, at the request of the authorities, partners. 

It is important to mention that the projections are realized in “constant policy scenarios”. In other words, the projections are by no means equivalent to forecasts, notably because they assume that current pension legislation – including pension reforms that are already enacted –is applied during the whole projection period (that is, till 2060). In the AWG methodology, only voted reforms are considered as ‘enacted’. In the “Ageing Report 2015”, a reform should have been voted in January 2015 at the latest to be taken into account. As a consequence, pension reforms announced by the Belgian government in place since October 2014 are not taken into account in these projections.