European Patent Office Staff Representatives Express Concerns About the New Pension Scheme Regulations and Transfer of Pension Rights (Contracting States)
THIS past year I wrote loads of articles about pension fraud in the UK and its facilitators (police, pension giants like Standard Life, even some Sirius clients like Home Office and London Municipality). It's like the system here is designed to cover up rather than tackle pension fraud.
Around the time I got "slam-dunk" proof of pension fraud against me and my former colleagues (who are very upset about this; some had tried to get to the bottom of this for years already, but Standard Life and Sirius turned them away) the EPO's workers sought to take their pensions out of the UK. Only months later the EPO bothered to reply (via Jan Boulanger) and it has been getting uglier.
Consider this document published just before the Christmas break. [PDF]
I went through every single page (some are not much text, some were seen before in one form or another) and it shows the reality of António Campinos in power. He is just trying to "finish the job" of Benoît Battistelli - basically plundering the Office through speculations and financialization.
Given how deep this goes, including the stacked internal tribunal (a professor who works for the same "university" (an oligarchy's Establishment, the University of Leuven) that gave a fake PhD to Karen Sandler, who never wrote code but instead attacks those who made GNU and the GPL), one must stay ahead of the curve and envision what this may mean in the long run.
The relevant portion from the 48-page document follows:
Opinion of the CSC members of the GCC on GCC/DOC 34/2023:
Circular 390 – New transfer coefficients (Article 12 of the Pension Scheme Regulations and New Pension Scheme Regulations) and Joint Report of the AAG on Article 12
The CSC members of the GCC give the following opinion on document GCC/DOC 34/2023.
The CSC members of the GCC welcome the pre-consultation of members of the Staff Committee on the Joint Report of the AAG on Article 12. On 13 November 2023, a meeting of the GCC SSPR with the Actuarial Advisory Group could take place in which questions as to calculation of the proposed transfer coefficients were discussed. The professional exchange with the external actuaries and the members of the Directorate Compensation & Benefits contributed substantially to the comprehensibility of the results.
The inward and outward transfer of pension rights as foreseen in Article 12 of the Pension Scheme Regulations and the New Pension Scheme Regulations is to be actuarily neutral, according to the opinion of the CSC members of the GCC. It could be established that the proposed transfer coefficients come closer to this goal. The revised discount rate of 3,25% in real terms and for the OPS also the revised career assumption have a significant contribution.
The CSC members of the GCC, however, regard the salary adjustment assumption of 0,2% in real terms with doubt. The adjustment of salaries with effect from 1 January 2023 was below the cap (see CA/74/22) and as the proposed adjustment of salaries with effect from 1 January 2024 will be substantially below the cap (see CA/76/23). Based on the weighted average salary adjustment according to the active employees distribution the gaps amount to roughly 30 bps and 220 bps respectively. As the weighted average salary adjustment will never be above the cap, a compensation for these gaps is missing. It is thus impossible to reach the above salary adjustment assumption.
The recommendation of the Actuarial Advisory Group to consider the transfer coefficients in conjunction with each actuarial study (see paragraph 14 of the Joint Report) has the support of the CSC members of the GCC. The finding that a change of 25 bps in the discount rate would be likely to lead to a material change of the transfer coefficients is a key observation. This not only emphasises the need for a regular update of the transfer coefficients. It also demonstrates the relevance of the overly optimistic modelling of the salary adjustment.
The CSC members of the GCC understand from the explanation given in the GCC meeting that the reference to “the salary referred to in Article 10, paragraph 1” in Rule 12.1/1 (iv) of the Implementing Rules to the New Pension Scheme Regulations is implemented as the lower of (A) the salary paid in respect of the last grade and step the employee had held (B) and twice the salary for grade G1, step 4. The CSC members of the GCC further understand that the reference in paragraph 20 of the Joint Report should rather point to paragraph 9 of the document.
Transfer of pension rights according to Article 12 of the Pension Scheme Regulations and the New Pension Scheme Regulations is currently only possible from and to pension schemes of a few Contracting States. The CSC members of the GCC recommend that the Office further endeavours to conclude agreements on the transfer of pension rights with other Contracting States.
The CSC members of the GCC further recommend that the introduction of the recalculated transfer coefficients be combined with a transitional measure of six months for the transfer of pension rights for all pension schemes concerned similar to the provisions in Rule 12.1/1 (vi) (b) of the Implementing Rules to the Pension Scheme Regulations and of the Implementing Rules to the New Pension Scheme Regulations.
The CSC members of the GCC
They're basically making these pension schemes less flexible, less appealing, and probably more risky. Will staff ever see a dime? Nowadays the Office deliberately grants loads of illegal, fake patents (such as software patents) while hoping that illegal courts, which defy international conventions and constitutions, will somehow say "OK" to them all. This may be a disaster in the making; they built up a massive bubble and one day it must implode. They hope kangaroo courts can delay the implosion for a while, as those courts too become complicit in the scheme/scam, not to mention the EU authorising these illegal moves instead of detaining all the perpetrators. They all profit from this corruption, and we know at whose expense (even if it is not fully apparent yet). █