The tendency to enhance occupational insurance and its development in Greece

Papaioannou Sotiria
Description

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the current trends in social policy at European level and in Greece, in particular focusing on the discussion and problematic of the development of occupational insurance. More specifically, the basic question will focus whether or not these policies are the result of the 2007 - 2009 global economic crisis or they have intensified as a result of particular choices in economic policy which dominate the international political and economic agenda since the mid-1970s. In this frame, the basic economic and social transformations will be analysed (flexible forms of employment, new social needs - new social risks) which have emerged in recent years and affect the lives of the people, along with the types of social protection, not only during their working life, but also during their retirement. Thus, the basic issues of this dissertation will focus on the dominance of the privatization process over the public pensions' systems, the tendency for the replacement of the public system over private system, the tendency to reinforce individual responsibility thus leaving the individual to bear the cost of a possible system failure. Moreover, it analyses the role of supranational organizations, and in particular EIOPA, as governance bodies, which appear to partly replace the legal basis for specific policy choices, the concept of Europeanisation as the tendency to integrate European policy at national level and the effects this process has on public policies and public systems. Finally, the impact of the financial crises over the social policy will be analysed, and in particular the impact of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 on the development, consolidation or even acceleration of this privatization process. These transformations appear to alter the relationship between the state, society and the market and redefine the role of social security and employment and are also considered to be crucial in order to understand the trend/ direction of Greek pension policy towards liberalizing / privatising. Thus, we observe the full incorporation of European policy into the Greek policy with the incorporation of Directive (EU) 2016/2341 into the trends that have developed in the EU and globally and in particular the delimitation of the organisation of the second pillar with the operation of the Occupational Funds (TEA) based on the model of IORPs. The incorporation of the Directive takes place in the general concept of the adoption of the basic orientations of neo-liberal perception regarding the gradual withdrawal of the State from the provision of pension protection and the shifting of the assumption of risk from the state to individuals through (a) the promotion of the funded second-pillar pension schemes (TEA-IORP) (b) the introduction of funded characteristics (NDC) in the first pillar through the change in the method of calculating of the supplementary pensions provided by ETEAEP and (c) the discussion of the proposal for a mandatory supplementary funded pension for all newcomers in the labour market. All three developments are elements which confirm that Greece is coordinated with the model pursued in Europe, the adoption of a multi-pillar pension system aiming at the gradual withdrawal of the State from the provision of pension protection.

Thesis Committee Members
Academic Year
2018 - 2019