The European Court of Justice has ruled that member states have an obligation to protect workers’ pensions in double insolvency cases. The case was brought by former employees of glassware company Waterford Crystal, which became insolvent in 2009 and whose pension scheme became insolvent two months later, leaving workers with only 18% or 28% of their entitlements. The European Court of Justice ruled that the Irish state failed its obligation under the EU Insolvency Directive (2008/94/EC) to ‘ensure that necessary measures are taken to protect the pension-related interests of employees and of former employees, at the date of their employers’ insolvency’. The Irish High Court will now make a decision on the exact amount the state is to pay the 1,700 former Waterford Crystal employees, which in accordance with the ECJ ruling will not be lower than 49% of entitlement and will probably amount to at least 300 million euro.
English: http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2013/07/articles ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.