By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

Legislative intervention with a mini insurance bill that will “cure” open issues is being prepared by the Ministry of Labor for September. By the end of August, the leadership of the ministry will finalize the final provisions in order to then proceed to the public consultation and their voting.

The following issues are under consideration:

SOLIDARITY CONTRIBUTION

It is a commitment of the deputy labor minister Panos Tsakloglou – which he repeated speaking on SKAI television – that the tragedies with the solidarity contribution and pension increases will NOT be repeated.

Precisely because the contribution is imposed from the first euro (after 1,400 for the main and 300 for the auxiliary pension) the phenomenon was observed of thousands of pensioners either receiving much smaller increases or none at all, while in some cases they even received less than before. This stops from 2025 with Mr. Tsakloglou clarifying that in cases of a negative difference – that is, when the solidarity contribution “eats” a part of the increase or causes a reduction in the pension – the EFKA will cover it and the pensioner will enjoy the entire increase.

From there on, the optimal way of intervening in the contributors is considered with the give and take scenarios. Some of these include:

  • Reduce rates by 50%
  • Abolition of the contribution for supplementary pensions (with a benefit of €10 to €71 per month
  • Imposing it not on the entire pension but on a staggered basis as is the case with income taxation

REDUCTION OF CONTRIBUTIONS

Among the announcements of the Prime Minister in TEF it will also be the reduction of employer contributions by 1 unit. The reduction will “break” into half a unit in 2025 and another half in 2027. Thus, from 2025 the total contributions will be 35.66% of each salary, from 36.16% which is currently.

Recently, some scenarios for additional reductions are being circulated based on the fact that the measure for the declaration of working pensioners has exceeded all expectations by “inflating” the revenues of EFKA.

WIDOW’S PENSIONS

There is a passed law which provides for the beneficiaries of widow’s pensions, the reduction of their benefits by 50% if, after three years from the start of the grant, they work or receive a pension in their own right.

This law has been applied since 2020 in the Public and OGA, but due to technical issues it has not been applied in the private sector and the time for this to happen has come for approximately 70,000 insured persons.

To “ease” the pain of the cut, the Ministry of Labor is considering, among other things:

  • The beneficiary should be able to choose between the 2 pensions he receives which one will be reduced, in which case he will choose the smaller one
  • The cut should only concern the national pension (€426.17) and not its entirety

However, the possibility of not claiming back the retroactive payments from 2021 as unduly paid is constantly losing ground. And here, of course, ways to facilitate the insured by repaying the debtors in installments are being considered.

CALCULATION OF PENSIONS

From 2025 we are moving to a new way of determining pensionable earnings, which also determine the proportional part of the pension. These stop increasing based on inflation and from next year they will increase with the salary index of all employees. According to Mr. Tsakloglou’s calculations – and if it is assumed that productivity will increase by 0.7% per year according to the conservative forecasts of the Commission – then for an insured person entering the labor market now, the pension that will arise in 40 years will be at least 30% higher than it would have been if we had continued to use inflation as a basis for calculation.

This change, clarified by the Ministry of Labor, concerns the way pensions are calculated and not the amount of their increase each year, which will continue to be based on the sequence Growth Rate + Inflation x 50%

PURCHASE OF PLASTIC TIMES

It concerns the supplementary pension which in order to receive someone must have completed the minimum limit of 15 years of insurance. Until now, if someone had not completed them, they could only redeem the years of military service or up to 200 days of subsidized unemployment if they belong to the last decade. It is considered to be able to buy back years of study, pregnancy time or insurance gaps provided that she has completed 12 years of supplementary insurance. The payment can be made either in one lump sum or with deduction from the pension.

PENSIONERS WITH DISABILITIES

In theory this is one of the safest settings. The law passed last December was so poorly written that it required disabled pensioners who were willing and able to work to receive their disability pension to first stop working and then return. The bill will protect them from this inconvenience.

UNIFORM REGULATION OF SICKNESS BENEFITS

Although the insurance funds have been consolidated into EFKA, benefits such as sickness, maternity, work accident, funeral and camping expenses continue to be given based on the rules of each fund.

With the single regulation, homogenization is attempted and injustices are removed (for funeral expenses, for example, the PPC insured receives €3,000 and the IKA insured receives €800) with the aim of bringing the benefits closer to those of the IKA. This means that a few will lose a lot and most will gain little.

In any case, the leadership of the Department of Labor makes it clear that the retirement thresholds will not change until 2027. They will be reviewed in late 2026 based on the course of demographic indicators.