Abstract. The European Union is currently confronted with major economic and demographic changes that are challenging its ability to maintain strong social cohesion. Some possible solutions can be considered, such as increasing the employment for older workers and for women. In a comparative analysis for ten European countries, Romania has the lowest life expectancy, of 72.2 years, and the largest difference between life expectancy and standard retirement age, of 9.7 years. The private administrated pension funds can be a solution for labour market crisis from Romania; so recently there were adopted and implemented the regulations for this field.

Keywords: public pension; demographic changes; old dependency ratio; multipillar pension system; European Union.