The truth about the social security draft law

While thousands of pensioners are trying to realize that their pension will not exceed the amount of 600 euros with poverty line set at 665 euros, Labour Minister Giorgos Katrougalos makes great efforts to convince Greek citizens that it is not true that there would be huge pension cuts accusing opposition of telling lies to the people.

Speaking yesterday to private TV channel Mega, he argued that the examples cited by the news websites and newspapers are wrong because they do not take as a benchmark the reductions provided by the law applied by previous governments (Loverdos – Koutroumanis law (3863/2010)), which are greater than those proposed by the current government.

For instance, according to the examples provided by the economic team, a person who has paid social security contributions for 15 years with 800 euros pensionable salary, his pension would be at 456 euros based on law 3863, and 486 euros based on new law.

As protothema.gr notes, though, referring also to the current amount of pension that a person gets, in both cases pension cuts are recorded.

For instance, a person who has paid social security contributions for 35 years with 800 euros pensionable salary gets now 781 euros, while based on 3863 law he would get 734 euros and based on new law he would get 699 euros.

Furthermore, according to the new law there would be disability pension cuts, too, since the national pension will be provided only to those whose disability is set over 80%.

Moreover, the government wants to increase the social security contributions to supplementary funds in order to save 550 million euros annually for three years and close the budget gap without proceed to any reduction of pensions. However, this measure means that employees will see their pay slashed once more, since they will be called to pay an increased percentage of social security contributions.