site.bta Labour Minister Kalfin Confers with EESC Employers' Group President Jacek Krawczyk

Labour Minister Kalfin Confers with EESC Employers' Group President Jacek Krawczyk

Sofia, March 12 (BTA) - The social dialogue is not a place for
exchanging ideas but a means to achieve effective solutions,
said Labour and Social Policy Minister Ivailo Kalfin at a
Wednesday meeting with the President of the Employers' Group at
the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Jacek
Krawczyk, the Labour Ministry said in a press release. 

Without the social partners, the State could not build
adequately and correctly significant mechanisms aimed at solving
 problems, Kalfin said. He added that the Labour Ministry has
good practices in conducting the social dialogue, and he
expressed the hope that these will continue to develop
successfully in the future.
  
At the meeting, Deputy Labour and Social Policy Minister Gulub
Donev presented the main questions being discussed by the
working group on the pension reform in Bulgaria.  He said that
his ministry is working on building an automatic mechanism for
binding the retirement age to life expectancy. This priority is
part of the recommendations of the Council of the European Union
 to Bulgaria, Donev specified. He also said that the Labour
Ministry will support a proposal for the gradual increase of the
 retirement age so that the system can be predictable and not
burden one generation of pensioners alone.   

Jacek Krawczyk said that eight years ago, Poland reformed its
system for the provision of disability pensions. "After a broad
public dialogue  with all the interested parties, we undertook
measures to optimise the system and the opportunities for misuse
 of this kind of aid were brought to a minimum," he explained.