What are British interests in a single pension market, and how does the domestic social policy discourse correspond to the EU's effort to develop common pension policies? This chapter will argue that, contrary to conventional works that depict Britain as the European Union's “awkward partner” (George, 1990), Britain was quite enthusiastic about EU pension policies and frequently pushed for their adoption. While Germany had to send credible signals in order to get its preferences heard at the EU level, the maturity of the British occupational pension sector made it easy for Britain to call the shots on formulating EU pension policy. This is because both goal (pension portability) and instrument (liberalization of investment rules) of EU pension policies fit well with the existing British welfare finance nexus.

On the other hand, the British pension policy discourse is characterized by bitter disputes between the financial industry demanding a liberal pension regulator and consumer advocates requesting more efficient protection against corporate pension losses. Thus, in contrast to Germany, what needs to be explained in the British case is not the mechanisms that make signaling credible, but how the push-and-pull dynamics of British enthusiasm over pension market integration on the one hand and the inadequate representation of domestic consumer demands for a stringent pension regulator on the other fed into legislative outcomes at the EU level.