Having failed to comply with a twenty-year-old European Union directive requiring all member states to establish systems for insuring private employers’ pension plans---similar to the United States’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)---the British government is facing lawsuits totaling in the billions. Passed in order to ensure that EU workers do not lose their retirement benefits if their employers go bankrupt, the directive makes the governments of member states responsible for taking up the slack when companies are unable to fulfill all or part of their pension responsibilities. The possibility of finally being held responsible for twenty years worth of defaulted pension plans has been brought home to the British government by the consideration the ISTC steelworkers’ union is giving to making a test-case of the closing of two pension plans by the ASW steel company, after it went into receivership with the two plans in deficit.
See BOB SHERWOOD, Financial Times, November 24, 2002