Abstract. The financial and economic crisis has come on top of an existing demographic crisis that is straining the public pension schemes throughout Europe. As the population is aging, projections of future pensions show that they will not reach target replacement income. The demographic and economic crises have forced regulators in Europe to speed up the long-needed pension system reforms, but also to take some immediate steps to help them cope with the immediate effects of the crisis. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of the financial and economic crisis on public old age pension spending.

Keywords: old age pension, public spending, demographic crisis, global crisis.