The correction of this injustice will – unexpectedly – be one of the changes that will be included in the package of arrangements for widow’s pensions that relevant officials in the Ministry of Labor and Social Insurance are working on with the aim of being included in a new insurance bill in the autumn.
It may be that the burning issue for the leadership of the ministry is how to return from the approximately 60,000 widows and widowers of the private sector the additional amounts of pensions paid to them without the cut provided by law after the first three years of their grant, but at the same time they are emerging in plain sight injustices and distortions that make widow pensioners second-class citizens compared to other pensioners.
Three of these injustices have been targeted by the Ministry of Labor in order to be restored in the new bill. The injustices to be redressed in widow’s pensions are the following:
- The lifting of the ban that currently applies to the employment of widow pensioners under penalty of a 50% reduction of the widow’s pension. The current scheme provides that if the widow or widower takes his own pension or is employed after the first three years from the award of the death pension, he will receive the death pension reduced by 50%, unlike old age or disability pensioners, the who with the new law can be employed receiving the full pension. The Ministry of Labour, according to the information of “ET”, is considering removing the injustice, allowing death pensioners to be employed without having their pension reduced, as long as they do not receive any other pension apart from the widow’s.
- Revising the status of death pensioners to be considered a single parent family for tax purposes and to receive benefits under the same criteria as single parent families. It may seem paradoxical, but it is a fact that a widow or a widowed parent is treated in terms of income criteria and any tax exemptions, just like two-parent families! The most typical example showing the contradiction and injustice is the heating allowance. Recipients of a widow’s pension with or without children have the same income criteria as couples, so they are cut off from receiving the benefit, even though they should be considered single parents for whom extended income criteria apply (up to €27,000) that allow them to receive the allowance.
- Retrospective haircut of at least 20% in the pension amounts that pensioners will be asked to return to EFKA due to death from private sector funds in the event that after the first three years from the entry into force of the “Katrougalos law” they are employed or receive their own pension. Provided that the refund will not be applied to those who are still employed from 2024 onwards (due to equalization with the employment of other pensioners who do not have a pension cut), the amounts that pensioners will eventually be asked to return will be from 2019 and after that, at least the additional tax paid by the pensioners, as well as the other deductions they had (6% for illness and EAS deduction) should be deducted from those that will be returned. For example, a beneficiary of a widow’s pension of 720 euros, who after the first three years also had his own pension (even 800 euros), should receive half the widow’s pension (360 euros), plus 800 euros from his own pension. However, the cut was not made and the pensioner still receives 720 euros from a widow’s pension and 800 euros from his own pension. If he is asked to pay back the €360 retroactively for all the previous years, he will have to simultaneously get back the extra tax he paid in all the previous years for the widow’s pension he received (€720) and in addition be refunded the additional sickness contribution of 6% which he paid for the pension that will be returned, as well as the 3% ESS deduction he had on his widow’s pension because together with the old-age pension it exceeded the amount of 1,400 euros, above which all pensions have ESS deduction. With these refunds (tax, sickness contribution and EAS deduction) the pensioner should have a haircut of more than 20% on the amounts he will be asked to pay back to EFKA from the widow’s pension.
How they become poorer in OGA
The injustices that should be remedied include the cases of OGA pensioners with a widow’s pension from another Fund. In these cases, pensioners have a double cut, as they immediately lose the welfare part of the OGA pension and 50% of the widow’s pension after the first three years, with the result that in many cases they end up with a smaller pension than they would have had if they had renounced in the first place the widow’s pension.
For example, an OGA pensioner receives €600 from his Fund, of which €350 is the basic OGA pension (non-contributory) and €250 is the contributory OGA pension. At the same time, he becomes a beneficiary of a widow’s pension in the amount of 500 euros. As soon as she receives the widow’s pension, the 350 euros will be deducted from the OGA welfare amount and she will receive 250 euros from the OGA and 500 euros from widows, i.e. a total of 750 euros for the first three years. After three years, however, the widow’s pension will drop to 250 euros and she will receive a total of 500 euros. In practice, with the ups and downs of his pension, he will find himself getting less from two pensions (€500) than he was getting from his own pension (€600). This distortion has led many OGA pensioners to forgo taking the widow’s pension, lest they end up poorer after three years.
The choice is on the table pension and one national
The changes being prepared for widow’s pensions include, among others:
- The reinstatement of the provision which provides that in case the beneficiary of a widow’s pension also receives his own pension, he has the right to choose the smaller pension that will have the cut after 3 years.
- The merger of the two national pensions into one. Today widow’s pension beneficiaries who have their own pension at the same time receive two compensatory and two national pensions. What the new scheme will look at is to convert the second national widow’s pension into a personal difference amount so that the law providing for a national pension regardless of the number of pension rights applies.
How much is the widow’s pension cut after the first three years
| Deceased’s pension | Widow’s pension | |
| First 3 years | After 3 years | |
| 780€ | 546€ | |
| €399 (minimum) | 855€ | 599€ |
| 399€ | 930€ | 651€ |
| 399€ | 1.080€ | 756€ |
| 399 € | 1.155€ | 809 € |
| 404€ | 1.230€ | 861€ |
| 431€ | 1.380€ | 966€ |
| 483 € | 1.455€ | 1.019€ |
| 509€ | 1.530€ | 1.071€ |
| 536€ | 1.680€ | 1.176€ |
| 588€ | 1.755€ | 1.229€ |
| 614€ | 1.830€ | 1.281€ |
| 641€ | 1.980€ | 1.386€ |
| 693€ | 2.130€ | 1.491€ |
| 746€ | 2.205€ | 1.544€ |
772€
With work or second pension
. Gross pension amounts
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