Social pension

The caretaker government of Bulgaria has proposed an 8-9% pension indexation for July 1, 2025, as part of the draft budget for the State Social Insurance in 2025. According to the proposal, pensions for individuals who retire by December 31, 2024, will be updated based on a percentage determined by the Social Insurance Code.

Pension increases, lump-sum financial aid, reductions in deductions, “corrections for injustices,” and other significant changes will be promoted starting from autumn, benefiting large groups of pensioners.

Minister of Labor and Social Protection Raluca Turcan says that there is a "time bomb" ticking in the Romanian pension system, which is currently running a deficit of 16.7 billion lei, and that there is the risk that the purchasing power of the average pension will very much erode in the future. "There is a serious amount of disinformation circulating in the public space (...).

The average number of pensioners was 5.125 million persons in the third quarter of 2020, decreasing by 7,000 persons over the previous quarter, and the average number of pensioners from social state insurance has reached 4.675 million persons, according to data of the National Institute for Statistics (INS) sent on Friday to AGERPRES.

From July 1, 2020, pensions will increase by 6.7 percent, according to the draft budget of the State Social Security for 2020.

Expenditures for pensions will be with BGN 729 million more than the allocated for this year. The pension ceiling is not expected to increase and remains at BGN 1,200.

More than 2,130,000 pensioners will receive an increase of 5.7 percent on their pensions from today - 1 July. The change is in compliance with the Social Insurance Code provided for by all pension payments granted starting with 31 December 2018. This was announced by the National Social Security Institute.

In May, the Employment Agency reported the lowest unemployment rate - 5.5% since the agency exists, said Social Minister Biser Petkov to bTV.

The minimum pension is 207 BGN and 60 stotinki.

There will be an increase in pensions by 3.8% since the first of July. The change in money that older people receive is set in the budget and applies to all pensions.

Almost 5,000 Albanians are expected to benefit from the new law on social insurance contributions that entered into force on January 1.  

"All those who do not fulfil the necessary conditions for a pension can claim a social pension if they are older than 70 and have lived in Albania for the last five years," says the law.  

The Supervisory Board of Bulgaria's National Social Security Institute will introduce a 2.7% increase to pensions granted by December 31, 2013 as of July 1, 2014.