Proton 2024: towards a lasting social protection
For decades, Proton, the Staff Association's publication, has accompanied CERN at key moments in its history. In December 2022 (1), we addressed a subject that concerns us all: the future of the Organization. Today, we return to this important subject from a different angle.
The future of CERN and that of its personnel are intimately linked. Whatever scenario is chosen for the Organization's future, CERN will always need to be able to recruit, retain and motivate personnel of the highest competence from all its Member States. Ensuring that the Organization is still able to do so will again be the subject of the next five- yearly review, starting at the end of next year and ending in 2027, (to which we'll be reporting in a forthcoming Proton). Offering an attractive and on ensuring a lasting social protection system (which provides benefits until the death of the last beneficiary) is a key factor in the attractiveness of any intergovernmental organization, including CERN.
It is an ongoing challenge for the Organization which plays the role not only of employer, but also of State, to guarantee the payment of quality social benefits, whatever its future may be: continuation of the Organization's mission, merger, reconstitution, other transformations or even dissolution.
Why deal with this subject now, when the future of the Organization is currently under discussion?
The Staff Association considers that the Member States, the Organization and the personnel have everything to gain:
Establishing a framework that will guarantee the payment of social insurance until the cessation of the rights of the last beneficiary, in the event of merger, reconstitution, other transformations or dissolution, is a matter of good management.
Despite decades of progress on the subject, as the articles in the recently published Proton will explain, there is still a long way to go to make the acquired guarantees effective in terms of both pensions and health insurance, whatever the future of CERN.
Furthermore, our proposals have the potential to serve the future of the Organization, providing it with an even more robust foundation.
The Staff Association is proposing two lines of reflection:
- A study of the internal taxation of pensions, which would allow additional income to be generated for the Organization's budget and therefore make it available for the financing of the FCC.
- The formal inclusion in the Organization's legal corpus of the Member States' guarantee, enabling the need for the Pension Fund to be fully capitalised at all times, to be rethought.
To find out more, read the Proton (2)!