By Vangelis Dourakis

The big increase in self-employed, self-employed and farmers’ insurance contributions, which was expected to take effect next year, appears to be getting a new delay: The way the annual adjustment of contributions is calculated was to change, a development that would lead to exorbitant increases. The adjustment of the insurance contributions is based until now on the rate of increase in inflation.

From 2026 the increase in the contributions of the self-employed, the self-employed and farmers would be calculated on the basis of the index of changes in wages: So they would have to pay almost 5% higher contributions, a rate of increase twice what the insured are required to cover today.

Increases in half of the… expected

In other words, the possible new extension that will be given to the adoption of the new way of calculating the adjustment of contributions, will bring a smaller than expected increase in insurance contributions, as they will also be adjusted in 2026 according to the rate of change in inflation estimated at 2.6% instead of 5% or 5.5% that would increase based on the salary increase index.

The new system of adjustment of insurance contributions for self-employed people, as well as for farmers, has been passed since 2020 with Law 4670 (Vrutsis law)which replaced the income-based contributions established by Law 4387/2016 (Katrougalou law).

From 1/1/2025, based on the relevant law, they should be adjusted according to the percentage increase in the salary index. However, this specific practice was postponed and its adoption was “moved” to 2026. However, everything is now converging that it will be postponed for one more year to be implemented in 2027.

After all, the committee that has been set up since April 2024 to calculate the wage index has not yet reached its conclusion, while the deadline for submitting it to the leadership of the Ministry of Labor expires in December.

Where will the new insurance contributions be formed?

So charges will be halved and self-employed insurance contributions will increase from 6 to 17 euros based on inflation. For example, the total contribution of the first category will rise to 251 euros per month, up from 245 euros now, and in the 6th category it will be 676 euros, up from 659 euros now.

However, if the salary index were to be applied, the charges for professionals would start from 14 euros per month for the first category, with the monthly premium reaching 259 euros, up to 39 euros per month for the 6th and higher category, with the premium reaching 700 euros per month.

However, the majority of freelancers overwhelmingly choose the first insurance category, where 8 out of 10 self-employed people are insured based on the official census published by EFKA for the distribution of freelancers and farmers in the insurance categories valid from 1/1/2025.

Specifically, according to the data of the census of the self-employed (self-employed and farmers) that EFKA began to publish in total 1,258,211 of self-employed persons with more than 5 years of activity, the 972.261 (77.2%) are insured in the first category. Of them, the 637.208 are freelancers and 335,053 farmers (former OGA).