The Senate in the Netherlands has announced that it will debate the Future Pensions Act on 22 and 23 May, a week later than planned.

According to the Dutch Federation of Pension Funds, the Senate is aiming to vote on the act on 30 May.

The new members of the Senate are due to be installed on 6 June.

The Senate is debating the Future Pensions Act a week later than previously intended due to an international obligation of the Socialist Party senator on the originally agreed date.

If passed by the Senate, the new law is expected to come into force on 1 July 2023, with pension funds having until 2027 to switch to the new pension rules.

The House of Representatives voted in favour of passing the new law in January earlier this year.

The Future Pensions Act includes a package of new pension rules that aim to lay the foundations for an updated pension system, which will shift focus from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) style pensions.

To achieve a majority in the House of Representatives, the main amendments and motions of the Green Left and the Labour Party were adopted.

These include three amendments on reducing the number of workers who would not be accruing a pension, with workers to begin accruing a pension at age 18 instead of 21 under the law, while the waiting time has been eliminated, and a quantitative reduction target to halve the number of workers not accruing a pension by 1 January 2028 was introduced.

A motion requesting the government to develop a new early retirement scheme for labour-intensive professions after the current one expires in 2025 was introduced, alongside an amendment to allow a collective benefit scheme for the solidarity contract and an amendment on broadening the default method for converting pension entitlements in the current system to personal pension assets in the new system.

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