ABSTRACT
The pension privatization trend that swept Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) between 1998 and 2004 presents a conundrum when viewed from the perspective of European Union (EU) enlargement. While these reforms took place during the EU accession process, the EU did not use its formidable membership conditionality to impose them on CEE accession states. Quite the contrary, Ferge and Juhász (2004: 234) show that the EU played an ‘unduly modest role in shaping CEE social policy during the enlargement,’ and little to no role in reforming pension systems in the region (see also Deacon 2000; Vaughan-Whitehead 2003, 152–6; Potůček 2004). Therefore, the rise of pension privatization in CEE cannot be attributed to the ‘active leverage’ of the EU (Vachudova 2005). The trend towards full or partial replacement of pay-as-you-go pension systems with ones based on private individual pension savings accounts (what I term ‘pension privatization’) was seen by many experts as an explicit rejection of the European social model and an ‘Americanization’ of social policy (Ferge and Juhász 2004: 249; Bohle and Greskovits 2006; O’Dwyer and Kovalčík 2007: 4). The question that arises is: if the EU did not demand pension privatization, why did so many CEE countries adopt it just before and during the accession process?
