Courts cannot exercise fiscal policy, Adonis Georgiadis stressed on the ERT show “Syndeses” when asked to comment on a recent court decision for an increase in judges. The decision concerns those who have appealed, we are studying its consequences, he noted while stressing that there is an issue of social justice.

As he said, I have a lot of respect for judges and I agree that their status should be high. The issue is what it can be, he added. It will not be applied to everyone, there is no money, said Adonis Georgiadis as he explained that this would lead to a complete fiscal derailment of the country.

Everything needs a measure in life, I don’t want to blame the decision, he said at another point.

We MPs voted to give up our retroactives, we did it because we wanted to show society that we all have to put our backs up, he said at another point.

“There are two side problems here. One is financial which is real and there is also a second big problem purely social. Can you imagine a society where in order to implement the real consequence of this decision we had to retroactively give increases to judges and parliamentarians. And that the courts have decided that it is legal and constitutional to cut the pensions of all but judges and parliamentarians. But is it possible? he wondered.

In the end, the state pays what it has, he emphasized. “Retroactively I don’t give to anyone, there is no way to cut the pension of the poor person and retroactively give millions… There is an element of social justice…”.

Furthermore, he added that “in the revision of the Constitution I will propose, I will really propose, that if court decisions are issued that have a financial cost, because I do not like that court decisions are not implemented. I like the state to be serious. A serious state respects court decisions and implements them[…]When a decision with fiscal costs is made, a one-time tax should be automatically imposed on all citizens. A piece of paper comes and tells them you now owe 500 euros, 1,000 euros, because of this court decision that must be paid. Otherwise, we cannot make fiscal policy”.

We are looking at how we can regulate the solidarity levy more fairly, the respondents said while emphasizing that our aim is to zero out the pending pensions.

Out of 65,000, there are 42,000 pending auxiliary ones

Regarding the auxiliaries, he noted that “we are doing very well”. “When I took over as Minister of Labor, the pending supplementary benefits I received were about 65,000, we have announced various things that speed them up, etc. Yesterday when I looked, we are at 42,000, so we have dropped 23,000 within three months. With the regulation that we are bringing to the Parliament, with the new bill, I believe at the beginning of November, I believe we will go to a performance of approximately 15,000 supplementary pensions in the State because we overcome the method of calculation that is done by hand and has a complexity, we create an algorithm and do it automatically same to everyone. Digital and automatic”.

“EFKA is transforming into a digital e-EFKA. The program is ongoing, it has an expiration date three years from today, it is on going, that is, every 1 month some part of it is delivered. It’s not like we’re waiting three years for something to be finished all the time something is being finished and our services are being improved and we’re adding digital services and everything else. In three years we will logically have fully digitized all EFKA records, i.e. the entire pension life, the entire insurance life, the rates of all our insured persons. When we get there, Mrs. Vidou, this will have happened: you’ll be able to have an app on your cell phone no matter what age you are and press the button and say at this rate if you keep working like this you’ll get a pension on such a day of such a year”.

We are looking at how we can regulate the solidarity levy more fairly, the respondents said while emphasizing that our aim is to zero out the pending pensions.