Slovenia has a defined benefit pay-as-you go public pension system and few people pay into the second, voluntary pillar. There are mounting calls measures should be put in place to enrol more employees into the second pillar. A debate organised on 1 October by private pension insurer Pokojninska Družba A showed this will not be an easy task.

Karmen Dietner, CEO of Pokojninska Družba A, stressed that fewer than 17,000 babies were born in Slovenia last year, the fewest in a hundred years, as population ageing exerts pressure on the pension system.

But Igor Feketija, a state secretary at the Ministry for a Solidarity Based Future, was not all that pessimistic.

"Projections of the share we'll have to spend on pensions are becoming less pessimistic. This year's data shows we'll spend 13.8% of GDP on pensions in 2050, which is much less than before, when the projected figure was over 17%."

He said that the pension reform blueprint adopted in April foresees changes to encourage the adaptation of the pension system, including boosting the second pillar.

However, he said that Slovenia has far fewer resources than other OECD countries for the second pillar. "Because we have a very strong first pillar, a smaller share of savings are directed to the second pillar. The same is the case is the neighbouring countries with similar arrangements," Feketija said.

Andraž Rangus from the Management and Law College in Ljubljana said the birth rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman in half of the world's countries, including in Slovenia. "We have the lowest number of births in the last hundred years and the average employee is 44 years old. This is a major problem that we need to address."

Marko Drobnič, the CEO of aluminium producer Talum, said possible solutions were adapting work processes to the older workforce, and the state making changes to the first pillar while strengthening the second pillar. "We've been talking about the latter for years, but nothing has been done," he said.

Bojan Ivanc, chief economist at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GZS), said that since contributions are already high in Slovenia it will be hard to develop the second pillar. "Businesses believe the second pillar could only be developed if tax break was raised from 5.9% to 10% of gross wage."

He also warned against automatic enrolment of the kind the UK has, saying that this should be decided in collective bargaining agreements.

Drobnič said that Talum has been paying into the second pension pillar for its employees for many years, because they "wanted to do something more for our employees, which has turned out to be a great move."

"But during the Covid-19 pandemic we halved our payments. And out of the 1,500 employees, only 100 chose to make up the difference. This shows that Slovenians are unlikely to choose to join voluntarily. We'll thus have to do a lot of awareness raising."