The Directorate of Social Affairs helps the Council and its Committees prepare their advisory reports by providing context-related and administrative support with respect to policy-making in such areas as: 
working conditions 
employment law 
company law and employee participation 
labour market and education
• social insurance and health care
• pensions
The Directorate maintains secretariats for a number of the Council’s permanent advisory committees, i.e. those on Work, Enterprise and Worker Participation (AOM), Labour Market and Education Issues (AMV), Social Security (SZ) and Pensions (PC).

In addition, it also runs the secretariats of a number of committees that issue independent advisory reports. There are the Working Conditions Committee (ARBO) and its OEL Subcommittee (MAC), and the Committee for Mandatory Occupational Pension Schemes (BPR).

In addition to preparing advisory reports, the Pensions Committee (PC) is responsible for
• keeping track of trends in supplementary pensions
• initiating studies based on its observations
• supervising such studies
• producing the related reports