Abstract:

The changes in the pension schemes of the Central and Eastern Europe countries, and first of all in the Polish national pension scheme are the subject of the paper. The study aims at reviewing the changes in the pension schemes and their impact on the public finance including the government budget. Research show that activities undertaken by the governments whose aim is to limit or even suspend the payments of contributions to capital funds cannot be described as reformative, but they are rather short-term solutions of the problem of deficit in the government budget. They improve the situation of the pay-as-you-go part of the public pension systems only temporarily, however threatening with a disassembly of the pension reform, which was very hard to introduce. Undoubtedly, the impact of the changes in the pension scheme on the public finance is significant due to a long-term imbalance in the government budget and the accumulating public debt. Evaluating the ongoing changes, the Authors notice that the solutions suggested by the government can be described as choosing between responsibility for the present and responsibility for the future.