- Utrecht University Professor of European Pensions Law, Hans van Meerten, and Durham University Law School Professor in Practice, Philip Bennett, have published a book on pensions law, titled EU Pensions Law - A Commentary and Practitioner's Guide, as part of the Elgar Commentaries in Financial Law series.

This judicious commentary, which has already received excellent reviews, identifies how EU law directly and indirectly affects pension rights and provides a detailed article-by-article analysis of the IORP II Directive, in comparison to the relevant articles of the IORP I Directive. It also considers the extent to which EU pensions law has been retained in the UK post-Brexit and the effect of the UK Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023.

- The board of directors of Sweden’s PP Pension has decided to increase the defined benefit pension ITP2 by 1.6 per cent for 2025.

The increase applies to both pensions that are paid out and earned pensions that have not yet begun to be paid out, so-called paid-up policies. The increase corresponds to inflation in the period September 2023 to September 2024.

For the ITPK, the upward adjustment will be to a level corresponding to an average bonus rate of 5.1 per cent for 2024. This means that those with a guaranteed interest rate of 1 per cent will be adjusted upwards by 4.1 per cent, those with a guaranteed interest rate of 3 per cent will be adjusted upwards by 2.1 per cent and those with a guaranteed interest rate of 3.5 per cent will be adjusted upwards by 1.6 per cent.

- Finland’s Seafarers’ Pension Fund has made an unspecified donation to the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG).

BSAG actively works towards the preservation of the Baltic Sea, combating biodiversity loss, and mitigating the impacts of climate change. It joins Finnish earnings-related pension provider, Veritas, which announced last week that it had also made a donation to BSAG.

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