CHALLENGES FOR PENSION SYSTEMS OF EU COUNTRIES AND UKRAINE AT THE CURRENT STAGE OF SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The national pension systems of the EU and Ukraine play an important role in the social protection system. The growing needs of citizens of retirement age necessitate a constant increase in their pension income, which encourages governments to seek additional sources of funding for pension payments. Demographic trends, financial crises on a global scale, and military operations in Ukraine pose new challenges for the continued effective functioning of the pension systems of the EU and Ukraine. They provide objective grounds for their further reform and improvement, which increases the scientific interest in studying these issues. The purpose of the article is to characterize the multi-pillar pension systems that have been formed in the EU and Ukraine, to analyze the processes in society that affect the need for their further reform and to identify additional sources of financing the pension provision of citizens. In conducting the research, the author used appropriate economic methods, special economic literature, scientific works of domestic and foreign scholars, documents of specialized international financial institutions related to the functioning of national pension systems of European countries and their regulatory and legal support. Studies of EU pension systems show that they represent multi-pillar pension models. Ukraine, in accordance with the national pension legislation, also forms a three-pillar pension system. It is determined that the use of redistributive and accumulative pension programs allows citizens of European countries to receive several types of pensions upon reaching retirement age. The large size of pensions in European countries compared to our country confirms the effectiveness of multi-pillar pension systems. The article analyzes the main challenges for society that affect the financial support of pension systems and characterizes them. Particular attention is paid to the current stage of reforming pension systems and issues related to raising the retirement age of citizens, the amount of insurance pension contributions, and the impact of financial crises on the pension sector. In Ukraine, the author analyzes the peculiarities of the functioning of the pension system under martial law and the possibilities of its financial support.