La protección de la viudedad en los países de nuestro entorno

Abstract

This article deals with widowhood or survivor’s pensions established in different Social Security systems of the following Member States of the European Union: Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Taking into account the risks that a comparative analysis of these benefits may involve, the introduction talks about basic methodological issues that have been followed for the preparation of the study. In the second part of the article, which is the most extensive one, after a brief discussion on the structure of the Social Security system in each State, the analysis follows with the basic legal regime of benefits that each system has established in favour of the surviving spouse of a marriage or the surviving members of a domestic partnership formally constituted. Finally, in the last section, some considerations arising from the review of these benefits in different States are excerpted. In order to keep a balance that allows us to offer accurate and enough information without being excessive and, therefore, not very useful, we have considered to analyse only laws from certain States. The selection has essentially been performed according to their geographical proximity to our State, their demographic weight and their seniority within the EU. As for the basic structure of the article, a vertical system has been chosen, under which special regulations for benefits are examined State by State. So as to contextualize the information about each country, a brief reference -minimal in some cases- to some of the basic lines of the structure of their Social Security system is done. Then, we continue with the development of the legal system of widowhood included in their regulations. The information comes from different sources: Documents produced by MISSOC (Mutual Information System on Social Protection), the information contained on the websites of the Social Security institutions in different States, as well as that one included in several publications of the European Union and, of course, all the information taken from different journals or specialized publications. We have to say in advance that conducting comparative tests about widowhood benefits or survivor’s pensions for each of the protection systems examined can mean a difficult and risky task. The heterogeneity of benefits and the diversity of requirements in each case implies that in any comparative study some elements or essential remarks are not included to properly define the protection granted by each State. Moreover, most States admit or are opening wider and wider spaces to a deeper understanding of complementary benefits under that assumption. Nevertheless, as a general conclusion, we can cautiously say that all systems examined consider some kind of benefit or benefits for widows or widowers and also most of them, except Belgium, France and Italy, extend this protection to domestic partners or, in EU terminology, to registered partnerships. In certain cases, some countries like Sweden recognize the protection for members of couples who have simply lived together for a certain period of time before the referred event, provided that they also meet other requirements. In any case, we must say once again that the protection granted in different States is so diverse that we are obliged to relate to the analysis we make when examining each one of the systems in order to get a better knowledge. Also, following this general and descriptive presentation of some of the most important aspects, it must briefly be noted, for example, that all States admit the compatibility of these benefits with other income of beneficiaries, although they all establish some limits on this compatibility, normally setting income thresholds above which compatibility is being reduced. Similarly, almost all States -except UK- also admit the compatibility of widowhood or survival benefits with other benefits of the system but, equally, setting limits to compatibility. Regarding funding, all States expect to carry it out by means of contributions, although in some of them (Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden) the mechanisms of contributory financing are complemented by financing through taxes, tax contributions which usually aim at maintaining a specific type of benefits or complementary benefits linked to “basic” benefits. Finally, the recognition of divorced partners in order to grant them a possible protection is so heterogeneous that it can be given as an example of the difficulty to compare the protection mechanisms in each State. So much so that noting, for example, that all States examined, except UK and Sweden, offer some type of protection in these cases and it involves at least providing useless information to know the real consideration of these situations in each State. In fact, Germany, for example, admits the recognition of widowhood benefits in favour of the divorced partners when they were divorced before 30 June 1977, provided they have not remarried and are beneficiaries of a compensatory pension; for those divorced after 30 June 1977, no benefits are recognized in cases of divorce, due to the fact that at the time of ending the marriage the system admits a “transfer” or sharing quotes between the former partners. It is true that all States require that the former partners have not remarried, and almost all require that the former surviving partners are entitled to maintenance allowance or alimony at the time of the referred event; as known, these benefits are not exactly equivalent, and are subject to specific recognition regimes in each State. Moreover, some of the States mentioned above which do not recognize benefits in cases of divorced partners, as in the case of Sweden, do recognize the right to widowhood benefit (“Adaptation”) in favour of those divorced partners who have decided to live together, even without remarrying or being a registered partnership when cohabitation before the death of the deceased has lasted more than five years.