Pensions: Retroactive for 370,000 pensioners – who will receive up to €4,000 – Newsbomb – News

It is very likely that the decision of the Special Supreme Court, which will meet on Wednesday regarding the reduction of gifts, will be in favor of pensioners, which will – in the first stage – give the green light to retroactive payments to 370,000 pensioners in amounts up to 4,000 euros, according to the Ministry of Labor. According to the Free Press.

If the Dirham decision is issued in favor of pensioners, it reaffirms the three decisions issued by the State Council (Council of State) for the years 2015, 2019 and 2021, according to which it was determined that pensioners are entitled to recover the reductions imposed on them in the eleventh month between June 2015 and May 2016 in main and assistance pensions. Likewise with gifts.

As of this 11th month, retirees have only been paid retroactively for main pension reductions, while retrospective payments for auxiliary pensions and gifts are suspended.

At the Ministry of Labour, they are prepared for the possibility that the AED will acquit pensioners, and in fact this possibility is reinforced by the fact that the composition of the Court consists mostly of Council of Europe judges, i.e. judges. Who ruled that the pension cuts for June 11, 2015 – May 2016 were unconstitutional.

The amount of retrospective payments of supplementary gifts and gifts only to the 370,000 pensioners with appeals does not exceed €500 million. If major pension gifts, for the 370,000 pensioners, are also included, the bill will rise to €750 million. If the government decides to return the cuts also to those who did not appeal, the bill will exceed 2 billion euros, and can only be paid in installments.

If the Dirham rules that the cuts are constitutional, everything will be reversed and an unprecedented judicial paradox will arise, with pensioners on the one hand, who will have won and have their salaries paid retroactively for 11 months by decisions from the court of first instance, and retirees who will not receive anything, because their lawsuits were not They have time to judge them! As for the cases that did not have time for trial, they are the most common.

If the dirham is fixed for pensioners, the contested retroactive effect is for the supplement and gifts of the eleventh month. For these amounts, Law 4714/2020 passed by the government when it retroactively paid the main pensions, stipulates that pensioners can claim them before the courts, as long as they appeal by July 2020.

The adjudication of cases ended retroactively in the trials that were continuing until all cases were frozen until the dirham crisis, in favor of pensioners. Therefore, in the event that AED acquits pensioners, all pending lawsuits for retroactive benefits and gifts are automatically acquitted.

In this scenario, the Ministry of Labor is working on a plan that includes the following actions:

1. Knowing the number of pensioners stuck in lawsuits as of July 2020.

2. Calculate the estimated amount of retroactive benefits to which they are entitled.

3. Finding a legislative solution to the expiration of lawsuits and the retroactive return of entitlements to pensioners.

However, before the new AED trial on whether gift reductions were constitutional or not, the courts were acquitting pensioners with interest of up to €2,500 on retrospective payments made to major pensions!

Therefore, if the Dirham decision reaffirms that the cuts are unconstitutional, the retroactive package that the government will be required to pay should include, in addition to the 11-month refunds for supplements and gifts, interest accrued on the retrospective cuts to major pensions.

Return scenarios if the UAE dirham lights up in green

The government has made it clear that those who have taken legal action will receive the benefits they claim retroactively. If the Derham decision exonerates pensioners, the government must, on the one hand, introduce legislation to speed up the payment of lawsuits, and on the other hand, clarify what will happen to the other 900,000 retirees who did not go to court because they believed they would recover their money from cuts that are considered illegal under Council decisions. State (Council of State).

If the Dirham’s decision is in favor of pensioners, the scenarios that will be taken into consideration are the following:

1. A one-time payment of €600 to €800 to pensioners who have not appealed to the courts and who have trials, with the amounts they claim being paid retroactively without further delay in the courts.

2. Retroactive payment only to pensioners who have filed lawsuits.

Regardless of the decision, the state's retroactive challenges in favor of the EAS law, which was also deemed unconstitutional, also remain pending. If EAS were added to the payments due retroactively, the beneficiaries would increase with an additional 350,000 state pensioners and the bill would rise by 400 million euros.

What could setting aside their claims before the court mean for pensioners?

The reversal of the dirham exchange rate with the issuance of a decision to cancel pensioners’ claims, in addition to the social reactions it will provoke, may also open a window for similar reductions in the future, which will be considered constitutional for reasons of public interest. In practice, if retirees lose the case, the support base that would prevent potential future cuts is significantly weakened. In addition, two categories of retirees will be created: those who before the dirham received retroactive benefits because the cuts were unconstitutional and others who after the dirham will not be entitled to anything because the same cuts… are no longer unconstitutional.

The amounts expected by pensioners

The new trial concerns gift reductions, but fatal reductions in supplementary pensions will also be re-judged.

According to the tables in the Appendix “Insurance and Pensions”, retrospective payments of additional assistance and gifts are organized depending on the Fund to which the pensioners belong as follows:

• For IKA pensioners retroactively from €410 to €2,372.
• For DEKO pensioners and bank funds retroactively from EUR 1,111 to EUR 4,004.
• For state pension holders, retroactively from €727 to €2,820.
• For pensioners of other auxiliary funds (lawyers, commercial employees, bakers, etc.) retroactively from €668 to €2,399.
• For NAT pensioners only retrospectively the supplementary allowance from Law 4093 and gifts of additional allowances are reduced from €503 to €1,985.

Refunds for old state pensioners from EAS

The case was brought to the Special Court by the Supreme Court which, by its Decision 1509/2023, rejected a lawsuit filed by a pensioner from the Bank of Greece who demanded from the TTE Insurance Foundation to return all gifts from 2013 onwards together with a sum of money. The total amount is 16,162 euros.

However, in his decision, A.B. It stipulates that grants from assistants may be canceled as long as “the decent living of pensioners is not jeopardized,” and that for Central Bank pensioners after the grants are cancelled, the amount of pension they receive is still higher than the average of the main and supplementary pension granted by the IKA, and therefore there is no There is no doubt about putting their honorable lives in danger.