Documents

OPINION 01/2009 on the Draft Bill for the reform of Organic Law 4/2000 of 11 January on the rights and freedoms of aliens in Spain and their social integration, amended by Organic Laws 8/2000 of 22 December, 11/2003 of 29 September and 14/2003 of 20 November. The Council welcomes the inclusion in the reformed immigration law of the commitment to maintain the integral immigration policy agreed with the trade unions and employers? organizations, carrying out the principles agreed upon in the dialogue between the two sides of industry: preventing and combating illegal immigration and effective and orderly management of migratory flows, involving the promotion of legal immigration and the integration of immigrants. The Council disagrees with the procedure followed by the Government in preparing the draft bill, regretting that the Government did not submit it for negotiation with the two sides of industry.The Council?s opinion recognizes that the unfavourable socioeconomic environment and its possible repercussions in terms of employment and social protection also affected the Government?s intentions in undertaking a series of changes with no direct link either with Community legislation or with constitutional case-law, and which set out an orientation of immigration policy. In this respect it notes that the draft bill includes the first references to principles such as ?reception capacity? or the ?progressive exercise? of rights not regarded as fundamental, depending on immigrants? period of legal residence in Spain.

We analyse the labour supply and retirement incentives of the Finnish social security system with a numerical life cycle model with endogenous labour supply and retirement decisions. The model features a detailed description of the benefit rules of the pension and unemployment insurance systems and takes into account various early retirement options. Our main aim is to find policy reforms that would postpone labour market withdrawals and reduce the fiscal cost of the social security system without having too regressive distributional effects.

Speech by dr. A.H.G. Rinnooy Kan, chairman SER (Social and Economic Council) at the conference ?Democracy and Trust?, organised by Rob (The Council for Public Administration) and NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), January 17th, 2009, in Sociëteit De Witte, The Hague.

Project of royal decree implementing Chapter 6 of Title XI of the law of 27 December 2006 containing various measures (I), concerning social security contributions and deductions on early retirement benefits, benefits complementary to some social security benefits and disability benefits - Follow-up to opinion No. 1,644 of 9 July 2008 - opinion 1665