By Ioanna Mandrou

With yet another decision, the court rejected the applications of former MPs who requested that their parliamentary compensation be adjusted to the amount of the presidents of the Supreme Courts of the country (along with their allowances).

The Plenary of the Council of State ruled that the applicant ex-MPs are not entitled to a retroactive increase of their parliamentary compensation at the level of the salaries of the presidents of the Supreme Courts for the period from 20.2.2008 to 30.9.2009, adopting the reasoning of a series of previous decisions of the Supreme Court that were also negative.

The specific case was initially decided by the Administrative Court of First Instance of Athens, which accepted the former MP’s lawsuit, awarding them the amount of 74,910 euros as a difference from the parliamentary compensation as well as monetary satisfaction for the moral damage he suffered. Subsequently, the State filed an appeal against the first instance decision at the Athens Administrative Court of Appeal, which was dismissed as unfounded.

Subsequently, the State appealed to the Council of the Territory.

The Plenary Session of the Council of Ministers (chairwoman Mary Sharp, who has already retired, and State Counselor Konstantina Filopoulou as rapporteur) accepted the claims of the State and rejected the request of a former member of parliament to increase parliamentary compensation to the level of the president of the Supreme Court. The decision of the CoE even invokes the decision of the Plenary of the Parliament from 2009 on not claiming parliamentary increases which has been in force since then.