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About the centre
Established
By decision of the Dean of the Faculty of Law, the Centre for Pension Law was established as of 1 January 2008. This website tells you more about the background of the Centre, the research areas it focuses on and how you - as a student or user of the pension system - can benefit from the Centre's work.
The Head of the Centre is Professor Mads Bryde Andersen, LLD, tel. +45 35 32 31 33 or +45 40 58 09 25.
Topics
Structuring the pensions system is one of the most pressing issues in the welfare society. In economic terms, we are dealing with approximately DKK 200 billion in:
- Life and pension insurance schemes
- Special statutory schemes (ATP, SP and LD)
- Financial institution schemes (capital pensions and premium capital pensions)
- Company pension funds
The rules for the individual pension schemes are complex, and despite the values involved, a variety of fundamental problems, including aspects of contract law, remain unresolved.
This makes pension law a perfect discipline for anyone interested in taking up complex legal issues with little literature to lean on and which, thus, can allow you to exploit and utilise your knowledge of general rules and legal principles of property law and public law.
Methods
The Centre for Pension Law was established as part of the reorganisation of research activities at the Faculty of Law that was carried out in 2007. The Centre does not have a permanent address; it is operated by academic staff at the Faculty with individual offices in the centre of Copenhagen.
The academic and research environment for the Centre is created in several ways:
- Meetings
- Maintenance of a website on pension law (www.jur.ku.dk/pensionsret)
- Publication of e-newsletters
- Release of a series of publications
The series of publications from the Centre for Pension Law will comprise both books published by recognised legal publishing houses and reports and meeting documents published by the Centre on the basis of its basic appropriations.
The first publication in the series, expected out in spring 2008, is a work on labour market pensions written by Mads Bryde Andersen and Jens Kristiansen.
If you have written a master's thesis that has received an excellent evaluation, there are good chances that your thesis can be printed by the Centre for Pension Law as part of the series of publications.
Why should I be interested in pension law?
There are several answers to this question:
- Because the topic is important to everyone: For young people, ‘pension' is something remote and dusty. But for those involved, it is really a question of welfare and quality of life. Pension schemes provide us with adequate financial security in our old age, or if we lose our ability to work before then. That is why pension schemes are an important aspect of life in modern society.
- Because it touches on politics and values: Pension schemes touch upon basic values. Should we personally set aside money for our pensions or is it an overall societal responsibility? This political balancing act concerns attitudes and ideologies. And these viewpoints are also reflected in the legal regulation of pension law.
- Because the number of people living on pension income is increasing: With our longer life expectancies, life as a pensioner makes up a larger share of the course of a person's life. At the same time, pension issues have become one of the greatest political questions: How should pension capital be taxed - here and abroad? These issues involve not only Danish law, but also EU law and international double taxation conventions.
- And because pension capital funds are gaining influence: Pension capital funds are increasingly making major decisions that impact on politics. When capital funds acquire companies and operate them according to different principles than those that apply to publicly listed companies, decisions in this regard are actually being made by the pension companies. When a start-up company goes looking for venture capital, some of that capital is bound to be pension capital. So who makes the decisions? The owners of the pension assets. But on what principles?
Thus: Pension schemes give rise not only to legal challenges, but also to political and ethical challenges. The Centre for Pension Law seeks to examine the entire sector that manages society's pension capital and asks questions about selected issues. Click here for a few examples.
