For the federal government, in accordance with the competent deputy minister Panagiotis Tsakloglou, “it’s a regulation, so it should be carried out”. The query is why from 2020 when the supply to chop widow’s pensions by 50% was due, it was utilized solely to public sector and OGA pensioners and to not non-public sector pensioners. The reply that the required software program was not prepared can solely be thought-about a joke. The precise factor is that as a result of pandemic… two years had been misplaced after which the vote of hundreds of pensioners needed to be seized in view of the parliamentary elections of 2023. Nonetheless, after 2020, the appliance of the regulation to loss of life (widow) pensions was additionally tried, however the reactions had been such the place the Mitsotakis authorities gathered.
After the European elections have handed, “hearth and blade” is coming to widow’s pensions and the nationwide pension included in them. Particularly, the invoice to be tabled subsequent July, which can deliver in regards to the minimize in pensions resulting from loss of life (widowhood), is prepared. Nonetheless, within the mini-insurance invoice that’s developing for a vote, within the title of equality that equalizes advantages solely downwards, it’s getting ready to scale back illness advantages, being pregnant and childbirth advantages and funeral bills with the institution of the Unified Profit Regulation of the EFKA. However let’s follow loss of life pensions.
What’s the downside
Based mostly on the Katrougalou regulation, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis himself trumpeted throughout the 2019 pre-election interval for vote-hunting causes that he would abolish it, a 50% minimize is foreseen if, after the primary three years from the cost of the widow’s pension, the beneficiary of the widow’s pension works or receives a pension on his personal proper.
In additional element, Article 12 of the Katrougalou Regulation (the Vroutsi Regulation 4670/2020 didn’t copy this provision or repeal it) gives that the surviving partner is paid all the widow’s pension for a interval of three years from the month following the loss of life. Nonetheless, after three years, if the survivor works or is self-employed or receives a pension from any supply, 50% of the pension is paid relying on the size of time of labor or self-employment. Provided that three years have handed since 13.05.2016 when the Katrougalou regulation got here into pressure, from 2019 to the primary pensioners who obtained a loss of life (widow) pension and had been working or receiving a pension in their very own proper (as a result of completion of insurance coverage days for the award of the principle pension, for instance) their widow’s pension must be minimize by 50%, which is calculated at 70% of the deceased’s major pension.
How a lot do they lose?
To know what “hearth and blade” means to pensioners, even when the deceased was entitled to a pension of 1,000 euros. The surviving partner could be entitled to 70% of this, i.e. 700 euros, for 3 years. After three years if he labored or obtained one other pension, then it will be minimize by 50%. Properly, as an alternative of 700 euros, he would obtain 350 euros.
But when we have a look at it in its true dimension, we’ll discover that it’s an inexorable minimize of pensions within the title of fiscal cleaning and with the logic of axing the idea of the shortage of social empathy that runs by Mr. Mitsotakis and consequently the ministers of his authorities. Based mostly on the information of ILIOS (March 2024), 370,756 loss of life pensions are paid with a median of 577.78 euros. Of those pensioners, round 60,000 are working or receiving one other pension. Subsequently, on common these pensioners in cost-of-living disaster circumstances generated by profiteering and tax-inducing GDP progress will lose €577.78 / 2 = €288.89 from their pension.
Subsequently, the insurance coverage system saves 17.33 million euros month-to-month when it spends 2.58 billion euros. So the insurance coverage system will minimize prices by 0.67% and these 60,000 pensioners will likely be requested to reside on a lot much less. At this level, allow us to recall the current place of the president of the Unified Community of Pensioners, Nikos Hatzopoulos, who acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of two.45 million pensioners (with a median pensionable wage of 876.77 euros) are unable to deal with the price of meals and drugs after the primary fifteenth of the month.
Cost of unconsidered retrospectives
Cuts aren’t the one downside choking pensioners. Provided that the minimize applies to public and OGA pensioners from 2020, it follows that vast sums should be returned as unduly paid pensions. Particularly, all the time primarily based on the typical, we now have 54 months during which 288.89 euros X 54 months = 15,600 euros needs to be returned from every pensioner.
The pensioners are maybe dwelling beneath the restrict of survival, particularly after the loop of profiteering that Mr. Mitsotakis has positioned round their necks from 2021 onwards. It isn’t attainable to not give the retrospectives, as a result of there will likely be a brand new wave of appeals from pensioners of the general public sector and the OGA, to whom the cuts will apply from 2020. The systemic media try to placed on a mantle of sensitivity to Mitsotakis and Tsakloglou by informing most of the people, because the concern got here up earlier than the election, for cost in installments. We stated, it’s a matter of usurping the votes of the pensioners by the socially insensitive Mr. Mitsotakis.
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