The way in which pensions are indexed for people who retired in June 2009-2019 before the amendment of the Social Insurance Fund Pensions and Disability Pensions Act of 2021 is unconstitutional – the Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday.
The Tribunal ruled in a panel of five judges. The hearing was chaired by Judge Stanisław Piotrowicz, and the rapporteur was Judge Piotr Pszczółkowski. The ruling was unanimous.
Decision of the Constitutional Court on the indexation of pensions
An application in this case was submitted to the Constitutional Court in 2022 by the District Court in Elbląg. The question asked by the court in Elbląg related to the dispute over the so-called June pensions of persons born after December 31, 1948, who are entitled to pensions from the new pension system.
As indicated, submitting a pension application in June resulted in a lower pension compared to applications submitted in the other eleven months of the year. When determining the amount of the pension in June of a certain year, the amount of the premiums that were subject to the last annual indexation was not subject to additional quarterly indexation, because it had already been indexed annually from 1 June for the previous year. the year in which the pension application was submitted.
As a result, retirees who retired in June could receive benefits even several hundred zlotys lower than others.
This problem should have been solved by the amendment to the Social Security System Act passed in 2021. According to this law, when determining the pension amount in June of a given year, indexation of contributions is carried out in the same way as when determining the amount of the pension in May of a given year, if this is more favorable to the insured . However, that change only affected the fate of future retirees – from 2021 onwards.
The June 2020 pensioners issue was resolved by the episodic law. The option to convert June pensions under the new rules did not apply to people who had become entitled to the benefit in June from 2009 to 2019. The case of a woman who retired in June 2010 was investigated by the court in Elbląg and finally decided. to ask a question to the Constitutional Court.
wkt/PAP
Source: wPolityce