To monitor the system social security on issues of their responsibilities, the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security, Panos Tsakloglou and the Secretary General of Social Security, Nikolaos Milapidis, informed the members of the Commission today.

As they explained, the ministry’s main policy axes include strengthening the stability and streamlining of the social security system, modernizing the institutional framework of the second pillar of social security and the e-EFKAincreasing the income of pensioners and supporting people with disabilities.

With the last one legislative initiative of Law 5078/2023among other things, for the first time, a maternity allowance was given to self-employed self-employed freelancers and farmers, the permitted limit of debts for retirement was increased from 20,000 euros to 30,000 euros and the condition of 15 years of insurance was uniformly applied to the branch of supplementary insurance for the provision of a pension.

As pointed out in a related announcement, “special care has been shown to increase the income of pensioners through extraordinary measures, such as the granting of emergency aid of 150 euros, 200 euros and 300 eurosbut also in the long term, through successive increases in their pensions and, in particular, 7.75% for 2023 and 3% for 2024but also from the increase in the replacement rates for those pensioners who have more than 30 years of insurance and the removal of the 30% cut of the working pensioners’ pension and its replacement with a special resource for e-EFKA.

Similar care has been shown to people with disabilities through the digitization and simplification of disability certification procedures, the creation of a National Digital Disability Register, the unification at 50% of the disability rate which is required to receive a pension, but also to strengthen the health committees of KEPA, in order for the certification process to be completed easier and faster. It is noted that, for the first time, the possibility of employment is given to disabled pensioners, without losing their pension and without paying a resource for e-EFKA.

Of course, the biggest reforms could not be missing the gradual transformation of ancillary insurance from distributive to capitalization with the creation of the new Fund of Ancillary Capitalization Insurance, which in the long term will be the largest institutional investor in our country, as well as the reformation of the institutional framework of professional insurance”.

In closing, both the Deputy Minister of Labour, Mr. Tsakloglou, and the Secretary General, Mr. Milapidis, referred to the ongoing projects for the single regulation of cash benefits and the single regulation for pensions and disability benefits and in two major projects of e-EFKA: the creation of a new Integrated Information System and the digitization of the insurance life of all its insured persons.