The final decision on the granting or not of the Christmas and Easter gifts as well as the leave allowance, as well as the cuts in supplementary pensions, for the period June 2015 – May 2016, will be decided by the Supreme Special Court during their meeting today.
Initially the decision is expected to concern the 350,000 pensioners who had appealed to previous levels of courts against the cuts and were vindicated. However, it is not excluded Supreme Court to vindicate all pensioners (2,500,000), which will increase the cost of performance of retrospectives, which reaches 2.5 billion euros.
The Supreme Special Court
The matter was brought to the Supreme Special Court after the different – conflicting decisions of the two supreme courts (Supreme Court and Council of State) which related to the eleven months June 2015 – May 2016 and not to the total period for which the pensioners have appealed.
THE Areios Pagosunanimously ruled that the cuts to private sector supplementary pensions in terms of Christmas and Easter gifts and the 11-month holiday allowance from 2015 to 2016 are constitutional. The reasoning of the court is based on the assumption that the cuts were made to serve matters of general interest, which touch the public interest, as they are related to the economic rescue of the country.
Instead, the SC has ruled that the cuts are unconstitutional to gifts and vacation pay made under the fiscal adjustment laws in 2012, and specifically for the 11 months between 2015 and 2016.
After these conflicting decisions, the Supreme Special Court is called upon today to resolve this issue. It is noted that the presidents of the Supreme Courts of the country and their members participate in this.
According to the law office of Mr. L. Apostolidis “the pensioners expect a positive decision from the AED, which will lead to the unity of the legal order, both in the private and public sectors, regarding the constitutionality or otherwise of Law 4093/2012 ».
The pensioners
It should be noted that all pensioners are waiting for the solution of the pending issue expecting one “political solution” that will vindicate them, decongesting – at the same time – also the courtrooms. The pensioners are waiting for the granting, to all of the retroactives concerning the cuts in gifts and supplementary pensions for the eleven months June 2015 to May 2016.
The government – so far – avoids committing to something similar, citing the high cost of such a decision, as the full performance of retroactives costs around 2.5 billion euros.
From the specific eleven months – whose cuts were deemed unconstitutional – only the reductions related to the main pensions were retroactively returned in October 2020.
The government also did not pay the gifts, as was expressly foreseen by the decision of the SC of 2019. New appeals to the SC by pension organizations followed, while now the Supreme Special Court is asked to give the solution.
The claims concerned 723 million for the retroactives of the auxiliaries and 1.875 billion euros for the public and private sector gifts.
Source Ot.gr
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