The pensioners of NAT, in a report submitted to the Parliament last July, claim that the recalculation of the old pensions (issued before the Katrougalos law) is incorrect because:
- The 3% increase in their insurance contributions (it was 23% instead of 20% in the other Funds) was not calculated, which would have led to a larger compensatory pension and would have reduced or eliminated the personal difference in the first place.
- The recalculation of the pension was based on the regular salary and Sunday wages, without calculating the leave wages, for which the sailors paid contributions, while the new – from 13/5/2016 onwards – leave wages are also included in the new pensions .
- The conversion of sea service time into insurance time was done in a more unfavorable way for the older pensioners compared to those who left after the Karugalou Law.
The three points above are included in a petition submitted to the Parliament by the Panchia Union of Pensioners of the NAT, claiming that the old pensioners lost from the recalculation because lower salaries by 25% were taken into account in relation to the contributions they paid.
It is noted that the recalculation process concerns 65,000 NAT pensions and the same method of recalculation was applied to all of them, which the pensioners denounce as incorrect!
In the answer given by the Ministry of Labour, however, there is an indirect admission of the possibility of injustices and incorrect recalculations in NAT pensions, as on the one hand it is stated that “the adjustment of the pensions up to 12.5.2016 was made on the basis of the pensionable salary on which the original pension was calculated”. At the same time, however, it is pointed out that “during the process of recalculating the already paid pensions, it is not possible to change the pensionable earnings or the insurance period that have been taken into account during the initial calculation of the pension”.
In other words, the ministry says that it did the recalculations with the data from which the initial pensions came out, but implicitly admits that even if there were injustices in relation to salary or insurance period data, they could not be corrected during the recalculation process. In other words, it does not close the issue opened by the pensioners of NAT, who claim that the pensions of old and new pensioners of the same branch were made with “double standards”, with the old pensioners being left behind.
It is very likely that a recalculation of the NAT pensions will be repeated, as from the data and the checks that have been carried out there are cases where the pensions have errors. Mainly, the question of the recalculation of 65,000 NAT pensions is put on the table by the mere fact that the 0.075% surcharge for the additional pension contributions, which was 3 units above the IKA, should be included.
How should the recalculation of the 65,000 NAT pensions be done?
As the retired sailors claim, the old pensions should be recalculated in the same way as the new pensions are calculated. EFKA-NAT, as they say, applied two standards. On the one hand it put uniform criteria in the insurance time for old and new pensioners, causing a reduction of 7% to 20% in the composite pensionable time, because the rates were not calculated according to the category of the ship (trucks, gas boats, etc.) From another, however, made a distinction between new and old pensioners without calculating leave pay in the recalculation of their pensions.
Retrospective up to 8,500 from the EAS for State pensioners
Retrospectively up to 8,500 euros are claimed and expected to be collected by tens of thousands of State pensioners with lawsuits for the return of deductions from the Pensioner Solidarity Contribution (EAS) which was ruled unconstitutional for 23 months (from February 2017 to December 2018).
Pensioners who have not pursued legal remedies, although covered by the original decision of the Court of Auditors (in 244/2017), are likely to eventually be left out of payments (whenever they come), as opinions differ on whether they are entitled retroactively without having appeals individually. However, when the decision of the Court of Auditors (2018) was issued, the services of the GLA had given an opinion that 400 million euros should be returned to all pensioners of the State with earnings of more than 1,400 euros.
According to the table prepared and published by the “Insurance and Pensions” insert, the amounts of retroactive pensions depending on the pension range from 8,418 euros to 575 euros.
Retrospective EAS for State pensioners
| Initial main pension (mixed) | Monthly EAS reservation | Retrospective EAS of 23 months |
| 3.050 € | 366 € | 8.418 € |
| 2.600 € | 234 € | 5.382 € |
| 2.525 € | 227 € | 5.221 € |
| 2.450 € | 221 € | 5.083 € |
| 2.375 € | 214 € | 4.922 € |
| 2.300 € | 161 € | 3.703 € |
| 2.225 € | 156 € | 3.588 € |
| 2.075 € | 145 € | 3.335 € |
| 1.990 € | 119 € | 2.737 € |
| 1.730 € | 104 € | 2.392 € |
| 1.665 € | 50 € | 1.150 € |
| 1.535 € | 46 € | 1.058 € |
| 1.550 € | 47 € | 1.081 € |
| 1.475 € | 44 € | 1.012 € |
| 1.425 € | 25 € | 575 € |
| 1.400 € | 0 | 0 |
#Window #corrections #NAT #pensions
