The fight to protect pensions and the rights of older people has become the focal point of the defence of welfare policies across Europe, reports John Lister Just two years ago the dramatic growth in the numbers of older people in the industrialised and developing countries around the world was described by the Second UN World Assembly on Ageing as a "demographic triumph". But many governments and agencies are calculating the likely costs of health and social care provision.
Militant action in the last two years, including general strikes in France, Germany, Italy, and even Austria have led the resistance to a Europewide offensive against pension rights by grasping employers looking to bolster profit margins.
The war on pensions has been just part of a wider offensive aimed at hacking back the welfare state provisions which have been conceded by weak and nervous governments to placate a strong and militant working class in the period since World War 2.
It was Germany's Chancellor Bismarck, in the late 19th century, who first sought to outflank the growing challenge from the trade unions and social democratic party by offering health insurance to a minority of skilled workers, and state pensions to workers from the age of 74 (well above average life expectancy).
His brain-wave has been transformed into a much more generous package of welfare benefits across Europe - benefits that today's neoliberal governments are no longer willing to support.
European governments have been looking for ways to raise the retirement age, increase the contributions required for state pensions, reduce the pay-outs to retired workers, and to force frail older people and their families to foot the bill for health and social care.
In Germany the Schroeder government wants to combine incentives to persuade workers to keep working to 65 years old and beyond (5 per cent additional pension for each year worked after 65), with steep penalties for those who retire before they reach
European
governments have been looking for ways to raise the retirement
age, increase the contributions required
for state pensions, reduce the pay-outs to retired workers, and
to force frail older
people and their families to foot the bill for health and social
care. * 60 (3.6 per cent cut from pensions per year before 65).
The argument wheeled out by neoliberals to justify the. million more pensioners. Within 10 years France will have more citizens over 60 than under 20: its social security system is already facing a $9 billion shortfall this year.
The EU Commission claims that by 2050 Greece would have to spend 25 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product to maintain pensions at the present level: the present EU average is 10.4 percent of GDP.
One obvious answer, to open up the gates of "Fortress Europe» and allow in a free movement of immigrants, is ruled out ideological grounds as governments pander to xenophobia and the far right.
The only other answer, argue the neoliberals, is to slash back pension entitlements and minimise the numbers who survive to claim them. Any additional pensions should be organised through private schemes that offer fresh profits to the banks and the rich.
State pensions have therefore been a target for austerity measures in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia, while the OECD and European Central Bank (ECB) have in recent years urged policies including a substantial increase in the retirement age, and measures to force more older people to pay towards the health care they receive.
In Britain in 1993, the government replaced the free long-term care that older people were receiving under the National Health Service, with means-tested charges.
Pensioners in Spain, some with very low incomes, now have to pay for their (previously free) prescriptions to raise an additional $267m a year.
The removal of elderly care from the mainstream publicly provided health care system in Britain and other countries has represented a significant step towards "recommodifying" services that had previously been excluded from the market. Only in Denmark is the public sector still the biggest provider of long-term care and home care services for older people.
Nor, of course, do the neoliberals discuss other possible sources of taxation revenue - such as taxing top earnings, or company profits (possibly through a turnover tax), or taxing the $1 trillion daily turnover in international currency transactions (the "Tobin Tax' proposal). Oxfam has calculated that